My computer only has 3.64 GB free out of 33.7 GB, but only a fraction of the used GBs can be accounted for!?

Question

What could be the cause of all this used-up memory? Is there a virus that does this? I defragment and clean up the hard drive regularly. What could be the problem?

Answer 1

No nothing is wrong. Most of your memory is used on big programs. You might want to do a right click on your C:/Program Files directory to see how big it is.

If you want to free up space, go to MY COMPUTER then right click on it and go to PROPERTIES. Do a disk compression to compress your files. THen go to control panel and ADD/REMOVE programs and try to get rid of programs you dont need.

Answer 2

First I would download a trial version of a system cleaner. System cleaners clean out temp files and such giving you back hard drive space. Systweak WinClean Pro is good at this kind of thing and they have a 30 day trial version:

http://systweak.com/awc/download.asp

The second is check your Virtual Memory settings. To check this right click My Computer and select 'Properties' then click the 'Advanced' tab. Near the top under 'Performance' click 'Settings' and then the 'Advanced' tab. Near the bottom under 'Virtual memory' click 'Change'. Make sure the C drive is highlighted. Underneath that make sure 'System managed size' is selected and click 'Set'. If your settings were already like this then you can exit. If not then you'll have to click OK several times until the system asks you to reboot then click yes.


Now this last step comes with a warning because we're going to turn off System Restore temporarily so you won't be able to do a System Restore prior to this point anymore. To turn of System Restore right click on 'My Computer' and select 'Properties' then click the 'System Restore' tab. Put a check in the box next 'Turn off System Restore on all drives' and click 'Ok' then click 'Yes' on the warning pop up window. Reboot your computer and turn System Restore back on. Right click on 'My Computer' and select 'Properties' then click the 'System Restore' tab. Uncheck 'Turn off System Restore on all drives' and click "Apply". Now highlight the C: drive and click the 'Settings...' button. Near the bottom of the new window there is a slider labeled 'Disk space to use:'. For your size hard drive I would cut the amount used down to 10% at the most. This only effects how many System Restore points are saved on your system. If you're ok with only having a couple of restore points you could take it down further but no less than 5%. When you're done click 'Ok' and then 'Ok' again.

Check to see how much free space you have now. If you still want or need more then I would move on to compression and such as others have suggested.

Answer 3

You could defrag too, that might help.

You might have a lot of programs on your desk top that can slow things down, you may have many applications going you don't need.
check your apps, get rid of what you aren't using, then take off the desk top stuff you dont need there.
Defrag, reboot. Check your space again.

Answer 4

Open Window Explorer
Go to Tools... Folder Options...
Click on the View tab.

Make sure 'show hidden files and folders' is selected
Make sure 'Hide protected operating system files' is not selected.

You should see all of the files on your hard drive. It probably is a system page file taking up most of the space on your hard drive.