Dell Laptop Hard Drive Maxed-Out

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cyclones9

New Member
My friend has a Dell laptop. He has a 50GB hard drive that is maxed-out on memory and it takes like 30mins just to boot up and it takes very long. I can get into Safe Mode and it runs fine. How would i cut down some space? Should I defragment the volume c:? I already ran the Disk Cleanup wizard and it took some old files out. Before I ran the Cleanup Wizard, I went into Defragment and it said it couldnt defrag. it because there wasnt enough free space.

Any help appreciated! Thanks
 
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PC eye

banned
Since you are able to boot up in safe mode you would have to manually remove extra files like mp3s, videos, and other non system related items to free up at least a few hundred megs to start with. using the msconfig utility to temporarily disable most items in the startup group will also help by reducing the amount of space needed for the page file.

Once you can load Windows to a normal desktop one freeware can free up more space by removing temporary files and folders no longer needed. The CCleaner is the ione to use there. http://www.ccleaner.com/ If your friend can get online that will make it easier for a direct download to the drive there.

To help further the reduction in the size of the page file used for virtual memory or to stop Windows from creating a new one at startup you right click on the MyComputer icon and choose properties. You then click on the advanced tab for the next small screen and follow that with the system performance tab. The screen shot should help in showing how this is done for the temp use of this.

 
P

PC eye

banned
gdehmlow said:
Download CCleaner:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

Run it. It eliminates all the crap that accumulates on your computer.

Oops missed that in the last post.. make sure you try it
Click to expand...

It never hurts to be a reminder on some things. :p When the hard drive space gets down to about 200mb still being free you will see the error message come up there. There is a regisry edit for this that will keep that from causing problems with low space messages popping up. The following requires a new "DWord" type value be created in the following registry key.

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]"

The DWord vlaue is named "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" without the quotes seen there. Once you have created the new value and still have it highlighted you go upto the edit dropdown menu and choose the "modify" option there to change the "0" value to "1", exit the registry editor, and restart the system to see that go into effect.
 
tlarkin

tlarkin

VIP Member
disable system restore (that can take up lots of space)

clear out all your caches, temps, etc

Uninstall anything you don't use.
 
P

PC eye

banned
I better watch out then. I have easydesksoftware's "setpoint" here that alows you to create upto 50 restore points daily. :eek: 50! The trouble is I never have to use the system restore. CCleaner time!
 
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SuzukiGSX1300R08

New Member
Yeah, i turn off system restore once i get a computer or reinstall windows which i do ever half year or so. Delete temp files, history, prefetch, any programs u dont use, music, if he has norton go into control panel and double click the symantec live update and and go to the last tab and delete those files. But yeah, prefetch is good to delete once in a while and you can really have a ton of files in there that are un needed.
 
PohTayToez

PohTayToez

Active Member
What ever is taking up that much space, get rid of. I'm guessing it's music, so I'd get a pack of CDs, and burn it all and then delete. Or, hard drives aren't that expensive, you could get twice the storage for $50.
 
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