Hi!
I have a Dell XPS-Z 866Mhz Pentium 3, with 384mb and a
20Gig hard drive, which is running a fresh install of Windows
XP.
That should be enough hard disk to run XP with space to spare. I have
a number of systems doing fine with the same size drive.
It sounds like you didn't get the drive erased before installing that
fresh copy of XP. (Windows XP setup--for reason known but to
Microsoft--will let you install XP to a non-blanked drive, essentially
reusing the formatting that the drive already has.)
Can anyone list the things that would cause this, and what I
could try to correct this problem?
The first things I'd look at are an "abandoned" recycle bin and the
System Restore folder. The Recyle Bin is easy enough to find, just
locate the "Recycler" folder (it's hidden, so make sure you're seeing
hidden files) and nuke it.
System Restore is a little harder to deal with. Restore Points are
stored in the System Volume Information folder, which users of any
type have no access to. You'll need to view the properties on this
folder, choose the Security tab and admit yourself by adjusting the
permissions. Then you can see and delete the folder.
(If you have Windows XP Home Edition, you will have to boot into safe
mode to do this. The Security tab doesn't show up there when running
normally.)
Failing that, I'd empty all temporary directories. Do this manually,
by navigating to the folder and emptying it. You should look at temp
and Temporary Internet Files at the very least.
Someone mentioned ZoneAlarm, and older versions of it did have an
issue with writing log after log and never deleting the old ones. The
end result was disk space exhaustion.
Have you checked using the Computer Management console to see if the
hard drive is not partitioned to its size, or if there are multiple
partitions?
Does the system BIOS report the correct disk size? (It appears that
Dell actually got this right for the most part--many of their systems
have 48-bit LBA support (for disks larger than 137GB) where you
wouldn't expect it. Others, such as the Dimension XPS R550, will
report the wrong capacity in the BIOS while the drive still works fine
and shows up correctly to the OS.
Finally, some unlikely causes that I wouldn't expect out of either
malice or hardware failure:
1. Someone's set an HPA or DCO on the drive, and it is consuming some
or most of the drive's available space. Setting the HPA or DCO on the
drive will make it smaller by everyone's account--except for utilities
that can recognize it. Even the system BIOS will not see the whole
capacity of the drive.
A tool like HDAT2 can reset the HPA or DCO to give you back all of the
drive's capacity if some has been taken away. Beware that this may
lead to data loss because the drive's geometry will actually change.
Backup your data FIRST.
2. The drive is massively bad and has suffered so many reallocations
of bad space to good spare sectors that no more spares are left. The
only option for the drive at that point is to reduce its usable size.
Any tool that monitors SMART data can help you determine this.
SpeedFan and HDAT2, along with any manufacturer's diagnostic that will
report such information, are good tools to use for the purpose of
examining this data.
William
