PC Help Please

[newsh]

Got a strange thing going on with my laptop. Its a Lenovo N200 running XP sp3. Just one drive, no partitions.

I'm really short of space according to the OS, if I click properties on the C drive it shows I have a 105 GB Hard drive and have 16 GB free (this was after deleting enough stuff to allow it to defrag..). I couldn't work out how I'd filled it up so opened the C drive and clicked edit select all and properties and it only comes to 30GB. So I should have 65GB free!
I did remove a third party disk keeper app which seemed to be playing up.

[mcandmar]

As default windows hides system files from you, from explorer open tools, options, and look down the list for two options "show hidden files and folders" and "hide system files". You should be able to see everything on the disk then.

As to what is eating the space it could be anything, most common are temp files and system restore files. Right click "My Computer" and look for system restore and see does it say how much disk space its using, its been so long since i used XP i cant remember what the screen looks like.

[newsh]

Had hidden files visible already but got another 2Gig by showing system files. still only 32 gig of the 105 gig drive though.
System restore is set to 1.5GB.

[Ducky]

Probably easier to download a disk space check program which will scan your drive and how you the folders taking up the space

[Ducky]

Also have you been into Device Manager and confirmed the model of hard drive is indeed 105Gb?

[newsh]

Also have you been into Device Manager and confirmed the model of hard drive is indeed 105Gb?

114471 MB

I just ran CHKDSK, took ages, nothing found..

[Nuvo]

Do you have System Restore enabled? This can eat a lot of disk space that you won't see particularly if you have it set to use a high percentage of total disk space. You won't see this hidden folder even with system files view set to unhidden.

If you are happy with how your machine is running and don't mind losing any previous system restore files you can set it to 0% and reset it to a more modest setting to free up space.

Sorry, I didn't see the comments above when I typed my reply.

You could download and try this, This might give you a better idea of how much space is allocated for every folder.
There is better commercial stuff out there but this should help.

[newsh]

Thanks for the replies all.

I switched off system restore.

Tried Diskdetective, I'm still showing a total of only about 30GB used of the 105 GB but only 19GB free, basically I have 55GB missing

[driftin jo]

have you by any chance got 55GB of files in the recycle bin ?
i have seen this before, if you have until you empty it it still counts as used space.

[newsh]

have you by any chance got 55GB of files in the recycle bin ?
i have seen this before, if you have until you empty it it still counts as used space.

No, emptied regularly, good call though

[newsh]

I've run an app called Treesizefree, I can see 2 folders which are flagged as "access denied" these are called RR Backups and System Volume Information.

These are there in Disktective too with no file size info.

[Jamo]

I did remove a third party disk keeper app which seemed to be playing up.

That's where you disk has gone, it's either unallocated space so the system thinks that space is unusable to the rest of the OS, or allocated it to an extended partition.

Go into Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management and see if there's any unallocated space

[newsh]

Nope, there's a 105GB partition which is the C drive and another called ServiceV001 5.99GB of Fat32

[Nuvo]

You might find that you have a lot of unecessary temporary files on your system. Every time you open a zip file as a folder using XP built in zip engine a copy is placed in your temp folder. The same is true for a number of self-extracting setup files. Download and install this great little program to help clean things up.

The other more serious problem is that the disks Master File Table could be corrupt although you did say that chkdsk didn't find anything wrong.

[Nuvo]

and another called ServiceV001 5.99GB of Fat32

I take it that must be a USB pendrive or similar device rather than a secondary partition?