[Treshan]

Is it actually normal that when you remove files, do a whole disk cleanup and disinstall numerous programs you loose disk space?

I'll tell the whole story...
This morning I decided to add a little disk space since the drive C always indicated to have 2,95 GB and yet I couldn't install the game Ultima Online which needs only 300 MB.
I first did a scandisk and repaired some errors... and what happens? I check the amount of free disk space and it tells me 309MB! Does this maybe mean that the whole time the 2,95 GB was a mistake?
Well, I thought so and consequently I deleted numerous files, disinstalled almost all programs I had installed since I bought this laptop,... and managed to free up to 900 MB!
But then, when I restart the computer, the drive C: indicates that I have just 51MB of free space.
To come up to here I disinstalled even many necessary files, so please could somebody explain to me this anomaly?
Thanks,

Treshan

 

[johnwill]

Do you happen to have Norton Utilities installed? I found that the Norton Protected Recycle Bin defaults to using a significant part of the drive to "protect" deleted files. I went in and reduced it's usage to 0% of the drive, applied that, then disabled the Norton Protection. My drive space was back.

 

[Treshan]

hmmmm... actually not!
I am not very keen on using Antiviruses after having
seen their effects on other computers of mine.
I only ONCE installed McAffee AV to checkup, but that
was long ago...

 

[lonnyjones1]

Hi
paste
>>>>Sounds like the recycle bin files are being saved (by design) into the System Restore files area. If you do not use the System Restore function of Windows ME, then you can clear out these files and recover some of the disk space (which you are not using anyway).
If your system _RESTORE files have grown too large, this can be corrected by disabling and then reenabling System Restore, to delete all the old restore points. Go to (Start - Settings - Control Panel - System - Performance tab - File System - Troubleshooting tab), and check the box for "Disable System Restore", click Apply and exit. System will reboot.

Allow STMGR time to delete all the old restore files, wait for no disk activity for at least a minute. Then run DEFRAG on the drive. Next go back into the Troubleshooting tab and uncheck the box to enable System Restore again. Then use the Hard Disk tab to set the "System Restore disk space use:" slide bar to only use about 1000Mb (or less) of disk space. Also, make sure system is up to date on the Windows UpDates site, as there is a year old fix for System Restore not working correctly.<<<<<<

Does this help
Lon