Why is my memory all gone?

[Guest]

I bought my husband a new laptop with an 80gb hard drive. He keeps getting
messages that he's short on memory and when I looked it shows that nearly all
of it is in use. He has very little on the laptop (I just transfered 4gb of
video off and he has NO music) and I see no big programs or files on the c
drive that could take up so much memory. I have cleaned up and defraged, but
there must be something else I can do.

Anyone?

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I bought my husband a new laptop with an 80gb hard drive. He keeps getting
messages that he's short on memory and when I looked it shows that nearly
all
of it is in use. He has very little on the laptop (I just transfered 4gb
of
video off and he has NO music) and I see no big programs or files on the c
drive that could take up so much memory. I have cleaned up and defraged,
but
there must be something else I can do.

Anyone?

Don't confuse memory with disk space. They aren't the same thing. "Out of
Memory" messages do *not* mean that the disk is full.

This message sometimes means that the virtual memory settings are too low -
perhaps that they are set to fixed, and an incorrect value - or that a
program is damaged or misbehaving.

What is the exact text of the error messages you see? Under what
circumstances do they appear?

HTH
-pk

 

[Gerry Cornell]

How much RAM memory do you have? Right click on your My computer icon
on your Desktop and select Properties to get the information.

How large is your C drive and how much free space? In Windows Explorer
rigt click on your C drive and select Properties to get this
information.

Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and click the Performance
Tab. Under the Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the
Peak?

You may find it helpful to know exactly how much of your pagefile is
being used. Use page file monitor to observe what is the peak usage.
Start it to run immediately after start-up and look at the log at the
end of the session.The log is Pagefilelog.txt. If you right click on
the file in Windows Explorer and select Send to, Desktop (Create
Shortcut). The same applies to XP_PageFileMon.exe.

A small utility to monitor pagefile usage:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

Try Start, All Programmes, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp to
Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Delete all
but the most recent Restore Point ( Start, Programs, Accessories,
System Tools, Disk Cleanup, More options). Run Disk Defragmenter by
selecting Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk
Defragmenter.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Anna]

Ok, I used the wrong phraseology...

The space on the C drive is all used up and there is hardly anything on
there - that is my problem. It's an 80gb hard drive with nearly 70gb
shown
as in use.

Sorry - I used the word 'memory' erroneously. It's not the ram, it's the
disc space that seems to be full and I can't find anything that big on the
c
drive.

The Vikster:
Just so we have a clear understanding of the problem...

It's just that you can't account for the apparent fact that the laptop's 80
GB HDD contains 70 GB or so of data, right? As best you can determine the
data on that HDD should only be a fraction of that 70 GB. Do I have this
right?

We'll assume that's the problem...

First of all, have you checked out the HDD with an anti-virus program and a
spyware detection program, e.g., the Lavasoft Ad-Aware program to make sure
there's no malware on the system that may be causing this problem?

And have you used the XP Disk Cleanup process (Start > All Programs >
Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup) to clean up the system?

Ditto for Internet Explorer > Tools > Internet Options to Delete Cookies &
Delete Files?

Have you checked System Restore (Start > Control Panel > System > System
Restore > Settings) and changed the "Disk space usage" to some reasonable
level - say, 2% instead of the 12% default that may be showing?

When you open Windows Explorer and review the files & folders listed there,
see anything unusual?

Did you just recently notice this problem with this "new" laptop or has this
situation seemed to exist from the very beginning?

Since it's a new laptop, have you been in touch with the laptop's
manufacturer to see if they can shed any light on this problem?
Anna

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Ok, I used the wrong phraseology...

The space on the C drive is all used up and there is hardly anything
on there - that is my problem. It's an 80gb hard drive with nearly
70gb shown as in use.

Sorry - I used the word 'memory' erroneously. It's not the ram, it's
the disc space that seems to be full and I can't find anything that
big on the c drive.

If you have used 70GB out of 80, you have 10GB free and that should not be
causing a problem.

Please post the exact verbatim text of the error message you are getting.

 

[Poprivet]

I bought my husband a new laptop with an 80gb hard drive. He keeps
getting messages that he's short on memory and when I looked it shows
that nearly all of it is in use. He has very little on the laptop (I
just transfered 4gb of video off and he has NO music) and I see no
big programs or files on the c drive that could take up so much
memory. I have cleaned up and defraged, but there must be something
else I can do.

Anyone?

Vik,

XP by default tries to use ALL available RAM. It's designed that way as an
aid to make things faster for the user. XP makes guesses at what the user
might do next and sets that stuff into RAM where it'll be ready if it's
called for.

XP is different than 98 and its other predecessors.

It's a little confusing that you've mixed RAM and the hard drive together.
They are two entirely different entities. From what you say, if you mean
the hard drive is getting full, that is a problem - provide more details and
be more specific about what's happening.
Include the applications being used, the exact error message, and
anything relevant to the problem. Otherwise it's all just a guess.

HTH
Pop`

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp to
Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Also
select Start, All Programs, accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp,
More Options, System Restore and remove all but the latest System
Restore point. Run Disk Defragmenter. Follow this procedure for each
partition in turn.

Go to Start, Control Panel, Folder Options, View, Advanced Settings
and verify that the box before "Show hidden files and folders" is
checked and "Hide protected operating
system files " is unchecked. You may need to scroll down to see the
second item. You should also make certain that the box before "Hide
extensions for known file types" is not
checked. Next in Windows Explorer make sure View, Details is selected
and then select View, Choose Details and check before Name, Type,
Total Size, and Free Space.

Folder Size -a useful tool for use with Windows Explorer when
investigating how disk space is being used.
http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/

Use the Search option in Windows Explorer to search for files over 1
mb. You sort the result in order of size by clicking on size over the
list of files. Search All Users ensuring you have selected Advanced
Options and clicked on the box before Search System Folders, Search
Hidden Files and Folders and Search Sub-Folders.

It is likely that an allocation of 12% has been made to System Restore
on your C partition which is over generous. I would reduce it to 700
mb. Right click your My Computer icon on the Desktop and select System
Restore. Place the cursor on your C drive select Settings but this
time find the slider and drag it to the left until it reads 700 mb and
exit. When you get to the Settings screen click on Apply and OK and
exit.

If you are using the Norton Protected Recycle Bin or Rollback RX Pro
these can create significant free disk space issues. The programmes
create hidden folders, which can grow to colossal sizes.

Another default setting on a large drive which could be wasteful is
that for temporary internet files especially if you do not store
offline copies on disk. The default allocation is 3% of drive.
Depending on your attitude to offline copies you could reduce this to
1% or 2%. In Internet Explorer select Tools, Internet Options,
General, Temporary Internet Files, Settings to make the change. At the
same time look at the number of days history is held.

The default allocation for the Recycle Bin is 10 % of drive. Change to
5%, which should be sufficient. In Windows Explorer place the cursor
on your Recycle Bin, right click and select Properties, Global and
move the slider from 10% to 5%. However, try to avoid letting it get
too full as if it is full and you delete a file by mistake it will
bypass the Recycle Bin and be gone for ever.

If your C drive is formatted as NTFS another potential gain arises
with your operating system on your C drive. In the Windows Directory
of your C partition you will have some Uninstall folders in your
Windows folder typically: $NtServicePackUninstall$ and
$NtUninstallKB282010$ etc. These files may be compressed or not
compressed. If compressed the text of the folder name appears in blue
characters. If not compressed you can compress them. Right click on
each folder and select Properties, General, Advanced and check the box
before Compress contents to save Disk Space. On the General Tab you
can see the amount gained by deducting the size on disk from the
size. Folder compression is only an option on a NTFS formatted drive /
partition.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Zilbandy]

If you have used 70GB out of 80, you have 10GB free and that should not be
causing a problem.

Doesn't XP start complaining when you have fewer than 15% free space
on a drive? I turned that little nag off because I frequently have one
drive that gets to under 15%. Maybe this is the "error" message he's
getting.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

V

What size is the drive in Disk Management? Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management. Your 80 gb
probably only shows as 74.52 gb. This is about there being 1,024 bytes
in a kilobyte, 1,024 kilobyte in a megabyte, and 1,024 megabytes in a
gigabyte. A number of drive manfacturers use 1,000 and not 1,024.

Are you using any Norton products? If yes which? The System Volume
Information folder ( contains system restore points ) is also hidden.

If you compress files the gain from reducing the size on disk is also
not reflected correctly in Windows Explorer.

You still clearly have something else hidden from view. This is not,
however a hardware issue. It is a software issue which the drive
manufacturer can help you with!

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Ron Martell]

Gerry,

Thanks very much for all of these suggestions, but by my reckoning there
should only be around 13gb used on the c drive. I have defraged, cleaned up,
compressed, used Folder Size (thanks for that, it's very handy) and nothing
will show me where the other 46gbs are being used (it went down a bit after
all that work). Like I said in the original thread, there is 3gb of video on
here but NO music and the only other big file is MS office.

I guess I'll have to try the manufacturer and see if it can be investigated
under the warranty.

Thanks a lot!

In order to use up that much disk space there are very like quite a
few huge files on your computer.

Use the Search function in Windows XP. Select "All files and folders"
then click on "What size is it" and choose the "Specify size (in KB)"
option. Select "at least" from the first box and enter 52000 in the
second then click on search. That will list all files on the drive
that are larger than 52,000kb (50.8 megabytes) which should show you
where a large part of the disk space has gone.

When the listing is finished click twice on the Size column header to
sort the list into descending order based on file size, with the
largest ones at the top.

One long shot possibility. One of my clients recently attempted to
install Thunderbird for her email and convert her existing Outlook
Express messages to it. She ended up with an inbox (in Thunderbird)
that was 13 gb in size. Don't know why this happened.

If that does not show you where the disk space has gone you can try
using Windows Explorer to see which folders are using the most space.
Launch Windows Explorer and look at the list of folders in drive C:
Right click on each of the folders and select Properties. That will
tell you the total contents of that folder, including the total disk
space used. When you find the one that is using the most disk space
double click on it so as to open it and show the contents, which will
probably include a number of subfolders. Again, right-click on each
and select Properties to see what disk space that one is using. You
should then be able to track down just which folders and subfolders
are using the most disk space.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Gerry Cornell]

V

There was an error in my last post. This is how the concluding
sentence should have read.

It is NOT a software issue which the drive manufacturer can help you
with!

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Guest]

Ron,

I looked on the system and I have 'folder size' so I can see exactly what is
using the disc space - yes, hidden files and folders too. There is nothing
that I see - using windows explorer - that will tell me what is using this
disc space. Either it's a glitch in the hard disc or 'whatever' it is is
invisible/not detectable.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

V

The point is that even setting the system to display hidden folders
and files they are not all displayed. Please see my other message.


--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Post Toasties]

The space on the C drive is all used up and

there is hardly anything on there - that is my
problem. It's an 80gb hard drive with nearly
70gb shown as in use....it's the disc space that
seems to be full and I can't find anything that
big on the c drive.

Is it possible there's a hidden partition all that space has been
allocated to? Even if there's nothing in it, it still takes away from
the space available on the partition you can see.

If your drive has two partitions and one is hidden from you for some
reason (like an Acronis Secure Zone), you won't find anything because
the missing space has been allocated to another partition you can't see,
it's not being eaten up by files on the partition you can see.

Prof

 

[Daave]

I looked on the system and I have 'folder size' so I can see exactly
what is using the disc space - yes, hidden files and folders too.

Just to be thorough...

Click Start, and then click My Computer.

On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.

On the View tab, click Show hidden files and folders.


It appears that you did this last step, however make sure you *also* did
this:

Clear the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) check box.

And just as important:

Double-click the System Volume Information folder in the root folder to
open it (for FAT32).

Or (for XP Pro w/ NTFS):

Right-click the System Volume Information folder in the root folder, and
then click Properties.

Click the Security tab.

Click Add, and then type the name of the user to whom you want to give
access to the folder. Typically, this is the account with which you are
logged on. Click OK, and then click OK again.

Double-click the System Volume Information folder in the root folder to
open it.

My prediction is that the hidden system files pagefile.sys and
hiberfil.sys are adding up to quite a few gigabytes.