How do I free up space on my hard drive?

O'Reilly publishes very good computer books. They have this checklist on one of the websites they run:

http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2004/05/25/degunkwindows.html?page=last&x-maxdepth=0#1

Maybe there's something on that list that you haven't tried yet. Good luck!

Thanks Thomas!

I'm going to go through that step by step!

If you are using Windows, click "Start," "All Programs," "Accessories," "System Tools," and then click on "Disk clean-up." Whenever you go online, Windows (via Internet Explorer, Firefox or other internet access programs) stores pages and images you have accessed. If you don't have your computer set to clean these off the computer on a regular basis, it will be "clogging" your disk.

When you have clicked on "Disk Cleanup," a little window will pop up in the center of your screen, and it will ask you to wait while it checks your "C" drive. After about five minutes, it will give you a window which allows you to check a box for what you want to delete. Everything you see there will be safe for you to delete.

I just did that on this computer i am using. It says that i can delete more than 64.3 megabytes. Of that amoung, 64.27 megabytes is in temporary internet files. If you do a disk cleanup, then try to defrag, and let the computer tell you whether or not you have the required 15% of disk space. With 8 gigs of disk space, you might be able to make a big difference with disk cleanup.

I hope some of it helps. After I posted, I noticed that the last few items don't really apply to your problem. But the first few can't hurt.

I'd suggest that you go the "Disk Cleanup" route before you attempt anything you find online. Also, when you go to a "free" site, it is important to watch that nothing is downloaded onto your machine that you don't approve in advance.

That's good advice.

I'm running the disk cleanup thing now!

I'll already back up to 463MB just from the few things I've deleted so I'm moving in the right direction.

I've also organized my desktop as Thomas' link recommends.

One thing I've found when trying to deal with this in the past is that often advice will start with "download blahblahblah" and, you know, if I had the room to download anything I wouldn't be having the problem in the first place because that would mean I had some room on my computer to hold something!

Thank you guys!

Empty your recycle bin.
Also, if you copied your pics off to another place then the originals will still be on your drive.
Make sure you definitely have them elsewhere (preferably on CDs) and them delete them off the original drive.
Then empty the bin again.

You can run a search for all files and when it's done order the list by size to see where the biggest files are.
Just in case you have .wav files you've forgotten about eating up loads of space etc...

The disk cleanup thing doesn't seem to be working .... or it's stuck.... or something. About 4 bars come up and it stops and stays like that for a long time.

Hi Heliotrope and thanks.

This probably sounds totally stupid but I did that search thing and don't really have any idea of what I'm looking at.

How do I tell what is okay to get rid of and what I have to keep.

For example: there are a lot of things that say....

C:\Prophet NVidia Series Drivers.....

There are a LOT of files that start with that.

I have no idea what that is.

If all of the prior suggestions don't work, you might try deleting all of your Internet porn files. That should free up several gigabytes.

(Hey, if I didn't say it Slappy would have.)


Here is a LINK to a disk space finding utility. It's free, and can help you find what's hogging your disk space.

And here is a LINK to Ccleaner, which is freeware that can help free up disk space by removing unused and temporary files, cookies, Recycle Bin entries, Windows hot-fix files, sold prefetch data, history and cache files in Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you use this program, be careful because the default settings are pretty agressive, so check them carefully. (And you might want to uncheck the "install Yahoo toolbar," which it will install if you don't uncheck it.)

The file you mention is component to your nVidia video solution - leave it alone.


My suggestion would first be to go to Add/Remove prgrams, and get rid of anything you don't use, including installed Windows components which are irrelevant to your customary usage.

Then, if you're running WinME or later, Disable/Re-enable System Restore, which will clear your stored restore points, then Reduce the space used by System Restore.

Next, delete All Files in

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files ,

C:\Documents and Settings\(for each user name)\Local Settings\Temp ,

C:\Documents and Settings\(for each user name)\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files ,

and C:\WINDOWS\Temp

(in all instances, delete just the files in the parent and daughter folders, do not delete the parent or daughter folders themselves).

Search through your My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, and My Received Files folders, under each user name, and delete everything you know you've archived elsewhere, archive anything else you want to keep, and empty the folders.

While CCleaner, as recommended by Ticomaya, is excellent, in your situation I would recommend instead CleanUp4! ; its very small (about 332K), very easy to use, and can't screw anything up unless you go out of your way to adjust its hidden settings.

Empty your Recycle bin, boot into safe mode, defragment, reboot once more, and with nothing else running, see what happens when you try Disk Cleanup.

That is the second time I've been accused of storing porn on my computer today!

Okay. I'll try to figure some of that out...

I'm up to 564MB now.....

I found a bunch of old files of Mr. B's from some stock program he used to run on my computer and I'm trying to get rid of some of those.....

Some of the things I try to delete say:

Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk.

How do I get rid of those?

Okay... for instance....

I have three Adope Photoshop Images that total 67,000,000+ bytes.

WTF!?

When I try to delete them I get that "Cannot delete" message.

When I go to the file it says they are in they don't show up. They only show up on the "search" thingy.

Do I need:

Wave sound (I don't have a sound card on my computer, btw)
GIF
PNG
HTML document
HTC
BMP
DAT
CABINET

A lot of this stuff seems to be clipart and templates that I never use.

Can I get rid of it?

No - those are file extensions for the handlers of various objects. The only folders you should be poking around in are the general temporary folders and the assorted personal folders for the users on that machine.

(bookmarking -- cuz I gotta do some of this stuff myself soon)