where have all the MB gone?

[scorman]

I am not stupid, have seached this forum, but XP has me baffled ... I
have been using puters since 386XT days

My 8GB boot C drive is running out space ( continually...it was up to
1.2GB free just two weeks ago!)

I have run the standard Disk Cleanup, CCleaner, moved my email files to
D:, turned off Google Desktop, emptied recycle ..
I have very few large programs loaded such as Photoshop/Bridge, Excel,
Word, etc ...most puter activity is internet access

When down to 300MB, I did searches ( including hidden and system) by
largest size, and then recent date , went thru and deleted any program
that wasn't currently used and then old/unneccesary *.avi , *cab, *.zip
...there were probably 500MB of this junk ...available memory did NOT
improve after rebooting twice ...where did they go and what does XP
keep storing that are NOT temp files, that keep filling my drive?

Where did this crap go to when deleted so I don't see improvement and
why should there be 5GB of stored files that shouldn't be there in the
first place? I have a second newer system with same XP, that has only
2.5GB of used space and is loaded with large programs for video
editing, TTax, Lotus Suite, plus those above etc

A search for size >5MB shows only 45 files and largest is only 35MB
....have to be oodles of small files hanging around to equal 7.5GB of
used space


I am stumped ....Where should I look?
TIA,
Stew Corman from sunny Endicott

 

[shegeek72]

My 8GB boot C drive is running out space ( continually...it was up to
1.2GB free just two weeks ago!)

An 8 gb HD? How old is it? Could be a dying HD.

SG

 

[q_q_anonymous]

I am not stupid, have seached this forum, but XP has me baffled ... I
have been using puters since 386XT days

My 8GB boot C drive is running out space ( continually...it was up to
1.2GB free just two weeks ago!)

I have run the standard Disk Cleanup, CCleaner, moved my email files to
D:, turned off Google Desktop, emptied recycle ..
I have very few large programs loaded such as Photoshop/Bridge, Excel,
Word, etc ...most puter activity is internet access

When down to 300MB, I did searches ( including hidden and system) by
largest size, and then recent date , went thru and deleted any program
that wasn't currently used and then old/unneccesary *.avi , *cab, *.zip
..there were probably 500MB of this junk ...available memory did NOT
improve after rebooting twice ...where did they go and what does XP
keep storing that are NOT temp files, that keep filling my drive?

Where did this crap go to when deleted so I don't see improvement and
why should there be 5GB of stored files that shouldn't be there in the
first place? I have a second newer system with same XP, that has only
2.5GB of used space and is loaded with large programs for video
editing, TTax, Lotus Suite, plus those above etc

A search for size >5MB shows only 45 files and largest is only 35MB
...have to be oodles of small files hanging around to equal 7.5GB of
used space


I am stumped ....Where should I look?
TIA,
Stew Corman from sunny Endicott

c:\pagefile.sys can be big as can c:\hiberfil.sys.
disable hibernation to delete the hibernation one.
pagefile.sys is for VM, I think it should be 1.5* RAM.

investigate directory sizes with one of these-
treesize - freeware version for windows
treeinfo.exe - for dos

 

[scorman]

already did pagefile.sys along with hiberfil.sys
thanks for the tip on TreeSize ..should help significantly

noted that altho Google Desktop was turned off , still huge 1GB+ *.CF1
files
can move to other drive, don't know how to set prefs so it doesn't get
stored on C:

I will report back if I have any revelations

Stew

 

[q_q_anonymous]

already did pagefile.sys along with hiberfil.sys
thanks for the tip on TreeSize ..should help significantly

noted that altho Google Desktop was turned off , still huge 1GB+ *.CF1
files
can move to other drive, don't know how to set prefs so it doesn't get
stored on C:

I will report back if I have any revelations

Stew

I guess that you don't want to remove the program that is creating
those files. Beside telling the program to store them slewhere. You
could compress the ones you aren't using or put them on DVD or some
other removable or external or as you mentioned, internal, thing.