HUGE "Documents and Settings" File Size

[Larry]

I am running Windows 2000 professional on a PII PC, which
has a 18 GByte harddrive. Recently the system became
unstable, and I reinstalled Windows, to find that it
didn't help the stability much. I noticed that the
harddrive was nearly full, so I downloaded and erased
from the hard drive all the material I could. Still, the
computer showed the available space was very small. I
have been unable to defragment the drive successfully,
although the drive properties show 14.3 GB used, 1.42 GB
free. When looking through the directories on the drive,
I noticed that Documents and Settings is using 10.6 GB
(12,518 files in 429 folders), although there is hardly
anything at all in the subfolders. I attempted to format
the drive, but once I got down to the Command Prompt, I
got the error "Can't unmount drive." Any ideas or tips?

 

[Simon Geary]

Perhaps you have a lot of unwanted data in the recycler folder or recycle
bin. You have to use the command prompt to delete files from the recycler
folder.

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

There is a good chance that the Temporary Internet Files folder in one
of those profiles is taking up some space. Also, if you downloaded
stuff and saved it in My Documents or on the desktop, that would help
account for it.

You are prorbably not viewing all files and protected system files which
is why you can't see what's where.

Download and install SequoiaView. It is indispensible to me for seeing
what's on my hard drives:

http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

hth

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

The Recycle Bin is not located under the Documents and Settings folder.