Hard drive almost full. Hardly anything on it. Why full?

6957 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by raptor_pa, Jul 10, 2010

d0c2584

Discussion Starter · Jul 9, 2010

I have a laptop, my OS is 'Windows Vista Home Premium' and my (C

hard drive is 37.1GB. My (C

is giving me grief. I used to have Norton anti virus and recently (About a month ago) I decided to switch to Kaspersky inernet security. My Dad told me that people have had problems with Norton in the past as it 'appparently' leaves a big footprint on the computer. So it may appear Norton has scarpered, but it hasn't really, there are still traces on the computer. Anyway, after uninstalling Norton is when me and my Brother noticed that the hard drive started to fill up. We both have external hard drives so we can transfer our files onto them but the main C: hard drive on the computer still shows that it is full up or filling up. I have read that Vista can store a lot of information on the hard drive and I have deleted some info but still, no luck.
I am not much of a computer boff at all and would really appreciate it if somebody could help me with this blasted dilemma.

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pip22

· #2 · Jul 9, 2010 (Edited)

First, to make sure all traces of Norton are removed you can download and run their removal tool from here: http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

Second, I imagine a lot of space (up to 15% of the drive's total capacity) is being used to store Windows "System Restore Points". The only way to delete these is by 'turning off' System Restore in Control Panel:

1. Control Panel (Classic view) >> System >> System Protection.

2. Untick the box against drive 'C' and click 'Apply'. May take some time to delete if there is a lot of data in the restore points.

3. Now it's up to you if you want to turn SR back on - if so, put tick back in the box against the 'C' drive and click OK. Personally I always have this disabled as often SR doesn't work so it's just wasting space anyway. But I can afford to be without SR because I have a permanent "disk image" of my C drive stored on an external drive. It's your call.

You should hopefully find now that your free space on 'C' drive has increased considerably.

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d0c2584

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jul 10, 2010

Thanks muchly 'pip22' for the help. I am a bit of a computer dunce and I have already done some of the steps you mentioned such as the 'Norton removal tool' and I did clear the restore history but didn't turn it off, I didn't actually know how tom My memory was around 1GB and is now around 9GB so that should be about right. Thanks again.

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sobeit

· #4 · Jul 10, 2010

first of all, if you had a newer versions of nortons, the footprint is not near as big as in the past. too many people are using out of date info about nortons.

you need to keep about 15 percent of your c drive free for your computer to run efficient so you may need run a temporary file cleaner regularly and possibly lower the space needed for your restore points.

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raptor_pa

· #5 · Jul 10, 2010

Also reduce the space used by temporary internet files.

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