I'm losing hard drive space without adding software how can i fix this and regain hard drive space?

Question

A few months ago I started losing hard drive space, I have deleted software but have not added any. I am now down to 2 % free space and only have about 145 mb of hard drive space left. My computer is getting slower and slower. I am running windows xp. How can I fix this????????

I have done a disc clean up, tried to defrag, and deleted all large programs. and any small ones i dont use.

I already had spybot and have run it, according to it I have no spyware, I cleaned up cache and temp, files . I havnt gained any space back yet. What else can I do???

I ran the disc check from command prompt and now I have even less hard drive space im down to 126mb. Any more suggestions??? Im open for anything, I need this computer for another couple of months atleast.

Answer 1

Sounds like you got into a nasty patch of spyware. Download and install SpyBot, AdAware and Windows Defender...they are all free. Scan with all three and hopefully they will help you out. I'm starting to hear more and more of trojans that do this to hard drives.

Answer 2

It is not vista, however you can do the following to restore space. You are correct with system restore, I actually freed up 8GB using this. You can also download a free program called Treesize which will analyze your disk and show exactly what files are using what amount of HDD space. Click on my computer, the right click on C, then properties. Click on Disk Cleanup, once loaded click the tab for more options/system files which should me the second or third tap on top. Next right click on your Recycle Bin and set the size to something small like 100mb or something as windows by nature sets it to about 2GB or similar. Next right click on my computer, properties, advanced settings, and click the tab for peformance/virtual memory. If you have an external HDD or recovery drive move your paging file to this instead, and set your page file down to 50mb as when you look at it, it will use a large amount by default.

Answer 3

in programs>accessories>system tools> there is a program called disk cleanup. Loosing hard drive space is also due to internet explorer downloading web pages, programs generating log files, etc... This little program cleans it, and it's included free in windows. and don't forget to defragment your drive (program in the same location as disk cleanup) as a defragmented drive can slow your xomputer very badly. This kind of maintenance should be done at least every two months

Answer 4

You delete the temp files and also the temprory internet files including off line content. run disc cleanup. I can give you a link that deals with hard drive problems. Some RAM/ hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful

Answer 5

You may have a couple of problems here, you may have a worm that is growing in space and eating up resources or your cache is too large for your drive. Start by doing a worm scan and then check the cache size in drive options.

Answer 6

I have seen people with large Browser caches & this can eat up space. I agree with the spyware diagnosis,,, but you might want to try simple clearing your browser cache & deleting temp files.

Simple to do. -- in your browser


Choose"Delete Files" button
Choose "Clear Cache" button

If it takes more than 1 minute to run these,,, you will have cleared Megabytes of useless data out of your hard drive.

WARNING,,, you may also be deleting Usernames & Passwords to secure sites with some browsers.,,, but as long as you remember those User ID's & PW's,,, its no big deal.

Answer 7

The drive is on it's way out to lunch! Run Chkdsk from the command prompt!

Answer 8

ur computer is running slow because of less hard drive space. do dick clan up and disk defragment. last option reload windows. let me know if u need more help

Answer 9

http://yanswers.blogspot.com/2006/10/pc-running-slow.html