Vista Eats Up All My Hard Drive Space...

G

Guest

Hey guys,

I've got a brand new Dell with an 80 gig hard drive and I've ran into
trouble with Vista eating all my space up. I installed Vista Ultimate on the
laptop and about 5 other programs that should leave me with tons of left over
space but I now have only 14Gigs left out of 80...What the heck is that all
about? Anyone else out there experiencing the same or know why it's doing
that?

Chris Morris
 
J

Jupiter Jones [MVP]

Chris;
Vista can use 15 GB of space.
But so can other programs.
I have 1 program that comes on 2 DVDs and uses about 7 GB IIRC.
How large are the programs you installed?

System Restore will use some space.
If your Dell has a hidden partition to restore the computer to
original, that can take more space.
 
J

Jupiter Jones [MVP]

Perhaps, but we do not know how much space "5 other programs" are
using.

"Something else is way wrong"
Possibly, but we do not know and I will not assume so without the
other details that are missing from the OPs post.

Your example is not typical.
Most who install several programs with Vista will easily exceed the 10
GB you are using, I did with only one program.
And I did not have anything wrong, much less way wrong.
There are just to many facts missing to come to any conclusion.
 
G

Guest

In C:\ do you have a folder called windows.old (not windows). If so, it is
generally quite large; it and all its contents can be deleted (they are the
files from your previous operating system, saved when you installed Vista
Ultimate).
 
S

Sir Benjamin Nunn

Chris Morris said:
Hey guys,

I've got a brand new Dell with an 80 gig hard drive and I've ran into
trouble with Vista eating all my space up. I installed Vista Ultimate on
the
laptop and about 5 other programs that should leave me with tons of left
over
space but I now have only 14Gigs left out of 80...What the heck is that
all
about? Anyone else out there experiencing the same or know why it's doing
that?
Click to expand...


Same thing happening here.

400 Gb drive, 80 gig used when I upgraded to Vista, now 120 gig used.

Every week I seem to run out of space WITHOUT installing any new apps, and
WITH a regularly empty of the recycle bin, and running cleanup wizard.

BTN
 
R

Richard

Is system restore switched on or off?
I choose to have it switched off, but I find it still creates restore points
occasionally, probably when it installs updates.
I went into control panel - system - system protection & re-enables it then
clicked apply.
I then disabled it & clicked apply & my missing disk space was given back.
I know you're talking about ptentially a lot of disk space missing but maybe
this will help.

Also, do a chkdsk /f to see if there are problems with the file system.

If there are no problems reported you can check to see what chkdsk reports
as used space v's the amount explorer does.
Run chkdsk c: at a command prompt.
Look at the chkdsk results (2nd line down) & it will say something like "abc
KB in xyz files".
Divide the "abc" figure by 1024 & that is how much many MB's chkdsk reports
are on your disk.

Now go to Explorer & choose to view all hidden files & protected files.
Go to the root of C:, select all & view the properties. Are they roughly
the same?

If they are, maybe you have a lot of clutter & dmp files.
I would recommend downloading ccleaner.exe, a free tool at
http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
I personally seclect everything under the cleaner tab.
I leave the "issues" tab & registry cleaner alone & don't use it.
Run Ccleaner & let it remove all the rubbish.
 
B

Bob Eyster

By today standards 80gig HDD is too small to run your OS and third party
software. You need to get a larger HDD.
 
G

Guest

I turned off and then back on system restore and it was only taking up
approx. 10 gigs of space so that was not the issue, I tried to do the chkdsk
/f and I get an error saying I don't have sufficient privilege to do so. My
account is an administrator account so I don't know why I wouldn't.
 
G

Guest

80 gigs is too small for todays standards, What the heck are you talking
about? You're telling me that Vista should eat up 90% of my hard drive
space?? The OS??? You're nuts. No offense.

Chris
 
M

MICHAEL

Chris Morris said:
Hey guys,

I've got a brand new Dell with an 80 gig hard drive and I've ran into
trouble with Vista eating all my space up. I installed Vista Ultimate on the
laptop and about 5 other programs that should leave me with tons of left over
space but I now have only 14Gigs left out of 80...What the heck is that all
about? Anyone else out there experiencing the same or know why it's doing
that?
Click to expand...

On the "More Options" tab under Disk Cleanup, you can delete
all but your last restore point.

Use Crap Cleaner to delete all those temp files that Disk Cleanup
doesn't.

http://www.ccleaner.com/


-Michael
 
G

Guest

Thanks Michael, I thought I wasn't the only one who would disagree with such
a statement. That guy almost had me shopping for a larger hd to compensate
for my lack of space for such a huge OS.

Chris
 
J

Jeffrey S. Sparks

I have a laptop with an 80gb hd and Vista Business Edition takes up about 7
gb of that.

Jeff
 
R

Richard

If you ran chkdsk /f from the command prompt you need make sure you open the
command prompt as administrator.
Right click the shortcut & choose run as administrator, then do chkdsk /f.

If this doesn't work try checking to see what chkdsk v windows explorer
reports as I explained in my last post.
 
G

Guest

Ok, here's the problem...not sure if I made it clear in the original post,
the OS doesn't take up alot of space, I have Vista Ultimate and I think it
only takes up ~10 gigs or so, not much. And then even if I don't install
anything else, my hard drive gets eaten up mysteriously daily, I watched it
one day and I'd hover over the C:\ with my mouse in My Computer and I'd watch
it go down more and more each time I hovered over the C Drive icon. This is a
serious problem, I never had this problem with XP but I won't go back either
so MS need an answer to fix this.

Chris
 
G

Guest

I've done a chkskd /f scan and it didn't detect anything wrong but it
happened so fast I couldn't read the disk space and other things it was
printing to screen. Not sure what is going on but my HD space seems to be
going down at a rapid pace daily.

Chris
 
R

Richard

So when you did chkdsk /f you let the computer reboot & run the check?
If so, look in Event Viewer for the "Winnit" event, there were no errors at
all?

To get the details of what chkdsk reports as used space just run chdsk c: at
the command prompt.
Then compare as I wrote in my 1st post.
 
G

Guest

Where do I find the Winnit event? I am looking all over for it and can't see
that at all. And yes, I scheduled it and it ran and then after testing I
wanted to read what it said and it quickly started windows so I had no time
to view anything. I'm not technically saavy so I need some help. I contacted
Dell thinking I'd get somewhere with them...nope, my warranty expired in Feb
and they won't help me now. Also, I removed their partition for system
restore as it's a total waste of space so that wasn't an issue either.

I need help!!

Does anyone at MS read these posts? How can I bring this to the attention of
MS to get a fix?

Chris
 

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