According to my Computer, I have used up about 80% of my hard drive. However, when I look at what I have on my computer it accounts for a little over on third of the space. I ran my Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox Drive Space Manager and it was not able to scan 48.84% of my hard drive! Showing "files left unscanned due to access restrictions" Here's what it was able to scan: Pictures, music/audio, video, documents, web files, compressed, free space and other (not sure what the "Other" is). How do I grant access to these files so I can free up the rest of my hard drive? Please help! Thanks.
If you know that your system is in good shape you can delete all but the most current restore point.
If you go to start|all programs|accessories|system tools|disk cleanup.
Select cleanup for all users.
Select the more options tab.
System Shadow copies and restore cleanup.
Thanks for offering to help! I followed the directions for system restore files and that did not make much of a dent. Then I tried to run chkdsk /r and and got this message "Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode" How do I enter an elevated mode? It seems no matter what I do I am only affecting the less than half of what's on my computer the other seems to be restricted or hidden??
Okay, I was able to run the chkdsk command however, that did not made any dent at all. Now, without me putting anything more on my computer (not even a document) I have lost more space! When I run the Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox Drive Space Manager it now shows 58% of my hard disk was not scanned due to "access restrictions" It appears that I am only able to use less than half of my hard drive space capacity! How do I allow access to these unknown files so I can go through them and either delete or save to external space?
I did the jamsoftware for my tree file size. Since I could not capture the entire screen in one shot I had to do two - so scroll down to the bottom of the second one to see the rest of the tree.
I hope this is the screen shot you can use to help! This is so frustrating that I am not able to scan or clean more than half of my drive capacity! Thanks
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Re: Help! My Hard Drive is full of hidden junk!!
You're using 33.9 GB for system restore.
That's 14.6% of c: drive, which is perfect.
What's not perfect is seeing 46GB+ in the users folder, unless you have a ton of pics, movies, mail etc... and know about it. Also I saw "My Music" and others in the c:\ root - which do not belong there.
Run this -
START | type cmd.exe into the start search box | right-click on cmd.exe above under programs - select run as admin. Then paste the following and press enter -
Code:
dir /a /q c:\ > "%temp%\0" & tree c:\ /a >> "%temp%\0" & start notepad "%temp%\0"
It will take 10-20 seconds to run, so don't be concerned if the cmd/DOS screen appears to be hanging. A notepad will open with the results. SAVE it and attach to next post.
Thanks again. Here's the results of the cmd.exe . . .
Also, I have attached the result of my drive space manager which shows my pics, music . . . . . not taking up a lot of space . . .
