Hard Drive Almost Full But Shouldn't Be

J

jerryw242

New Member
My ancient (2003) PC, which I am replacing very soon, has only a 20 gig hard drive. I don't save many files, and was cruising along nicely at about 15 gigs used until about two months ago, figuring I could make it to the upcoming Xmas sale prices.

Suddenly, however, I am down to below 1 gig. My habits didn't change. As a matter of fact, I've been steadily shedding documents and applications, or moving them to disks hoping that would help. It hasn't, I am down to about 500 megs and certain applications are starting to abort, with messages that they need more free space to operate.

One thing I've noticed is that lately certain Norton routines (aleupdate, etc.) are eating up a lot of memory when I check out Task Manager. Also, when I reboot, I get a message that "XPcom:EventReceiver" is shutting down. I don't have XP; I'm poking along with Windows 2000. Also, even though I shut down my internet connection before I go to sleep, I sometimes wake up to find that my computer has rebooted itself about 3:00 am with a "Windows Update," and the machine is really f---ed up. I have to use Go Back to proceed.

Any ideas? Thanks, I know that in computer time, this is a call for help from virtually another century, but I'd appreciate it.

Jerry W, NYC
 
i agree with linkedin ... run a disk cleanup. after it scans the hdd and displays what to delete, choose the "options" tab. there will be a choice to "delete system restore files". choose it, ok, ok, and you will free up quite a bit of space.
 
I'd also recommend clearing your temp folder. boot into safe mode first, then:

Start > Run and type %temp%

you can delete everything in that folder, it will not affect anything.
 
jerryw242 said:
My ancient (2003) PC, which I am replacing very soon, has only a 20 gig hard drive. I don't save many files, and was cruising along nicely at about 15 gigs used until about two months ago, figuring I could make it to the upcoming Xmas sale prices.

Suddenly, however, I am down to below 1 gig. My habits didn't change. As a matter of fact, I've been steadily shedding documents and applications, or moving them to disks hoping that would help. It hasn't, I am down to about 500 megs and certain applications are starting to abort, with messages that they need more free space to operate.

One thing I've noticed is that lately certain Norton routines (aleupdate, etc.) are eating up a lot of memory when I check out Task Manager. Also, when I reboot, I get a message that "XPcom:EventReceiver" is shutting down. I don't have XP; I'm poking along with Windows 2000. Also, even though I shut down my internet connection before I go to sleep, I sometimes wake up to find that my computer has rebooted itself about 3:00 am with a "Windows Update," and the machine is really f---ed up. I have to use Go Back to proceed.

Any ideas? Thanks, I know that in computer time, this is a call for help from virtually another century, but I'd appreciate it.

Jerry W, NYC
Click to expand...

Run CCleaner, it should do a fair amount of cleanup from the sounds of it.
 
It could be user specific too. Turn on viewing invisible files in your explorer options. Then look at \Documents and Settings\your_user_name\local

Look for any folder in there that is huge and delete it. Sometimes temp/log files can go crazy and write over and over again until they make files that are gigs in size.
 
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