Low disk space on drive C
Mary
Hard Disk is Low on Disk Space
You are running out of disk space on drive C.
To free space on this drive by deleting old or
unnecessary files, click
Disk Cleanup.
I did exactly what it said to do. My problem is I not
only did disk cleanup, I also got rid of some unnecessary
files to fix the problem. I still repeatedly get that
message. I don't understand why I keep getting this
message. Has anyone had this problem before. I could use a
little help on this if possible. Thanks
smoke
properties, look at the "free space". you should have at
least 768megs free or, ideally, 1.5gigs free.
Jay
appreciated.
>.
>
Schumi
GO in the WIndows/temp folder and delete everything in there. If you
have programs or games installed that you never use, uninstall them.
Also, check for a virus.
On Sat, 26 Apr 2003 07:24:19 -0700, "Mary" <sue...@netscape.net>
wrote:
Jay
today I have one gb left. i did not install anything else.
when I delete a large program I only pick up a little
space. What the hell is going on here. Thanks Again.
>
Bob Krieter
If you are running Windows Me, then you may be having the
same problem I had on three of my machines.
Microsoft included an application called "System Restore"
that saves copies of some of your files at given "step
points" so that if you mess something up, then you can
restore everything to "the way it was before".
This seems like a good idea at first. However, in
practice the implementation reeks like two-year old tuna
sandwiches behind the sofa. First off, in my experience,
when something goes wrong I end up re-installing Windows.
I tend to be a little dense sometimes, so I end up re-
installing at least one of my machines three to five times
a year. I have yet to talk to somebody that successfully
used a "Restore Point" to fix their machine. Secondly,
System Restore is a system utility that tries to save the
world and eats it by mistake. What happens is that it
keeps merrily saving "restore" files again and again as
you do installs, tweaks, etc. Running the restore slows
you down and consumes disk space, and it doesn't even warn
you. There is no way to get rid of the old restore
points, to free up the disk space, or to reason with
System Restore. It will not quit until it is dead.
Eventually, it will use up so much disk space that your
system will not be able to run reliably. This was hard
for me to accept at first because it seems so crazy that
Microsoft would make an application like that part of
their operating system. But it was true for me, and
following these steps will show if it is true for you.
System Restore is the most user-hostile system-saver
software I have encountered (and System Works and Nuts and
Bolts are not slackers in the system-saver/destructor
arenas, so MS has competition in the "Utilities that
pretend to help, but hurt" arena). In my opinion System
Restore takes the crown by not notifying the user what it
is doing, by not having an uninstall, by not allowing user
modification of processes (other than to add MORE restore
points), and by making it virtually impossible to get rid
of it.
You may notice I said "virtually" impossible. There is a
way to defeat this valiant Windows Me system saver.
Warning - the following steps will render Microsoft's
System Restore utility on your machine inoperative. You
might not be able to fix System Restore without re-
installing Windows. I say good riddance, but make sure
you agree with me before you proceed. Also follow these
steps carefully. In computers, as in shop class, if you
experiment with tools needlessly you can have "negative
experiences". If you stick only to what I tell you here,
then you will be fine and after the final reboot Windows
might work better than it has in a long time (eg. Fewer
unexplained pauses, more disk space, fewer crashes).
Here are the steps to try and get your disk space back and
make your machine run again if System Restore has already
claimed all of your disk space on C:
1. Print out these directions (optional step)
2. Save whatever you are working on, and close all
running applications.
3. Click Start (The Start button, Start Menu,
whatever you want to call it) - Run
4. Type msconfig and Click Ok
5. Click the Startup tab in msconfig
6. Undo the little checkmarks next to StateMgr and
PCHealth. This stops System Restore from making future
save points and doing this whole thing all over again.
You might have to scroll down a little to get to them.
7. I would also undo the little checkmark next to
SchedulingAgent if your machine cycles are important to
you, but this is optional and unrelated to the disk space
problem. If you notice irritating pauses for no reason
when playing games or typing, then SchedulingAgent is one
of a short list of likely causes. (DHCP, FindFast, and
hardware conflicts are others)
8. Click Ok, and go ahead with the reboot.
9. Your PC will probably warn you that you are using
the Selective Startup Agent to debug your machine.
Actually it is wrong, you are using the Agent to
permanently disable some of the software without deleting
it, which would be more irreversible. (Microsoft gets a
couple of points back for including msconfig to make up
for making System Restore so user-hostile). Go ahead and
mark the checkbox to say that you know about Selective
Startup, and do not need to be warned again.
10. Get a blank floppy disk, and a floppy drive if you
do not have one.
11. I would format the floppy to make sure it is not
bad (optional step).
12. Click Start Menu - Settings - Control Panel -
Add/Remove Programs - Startup Disk - Create Disk.
13. Follow the prompts and create a Windows Me Startup
Disk. Microsoft also gets some points for including this
handy little DOS Boot capability for their operating
systems (through the Startup Disk tool). The Startup Disk
cannot solve all problems, but it is certainly an
appreciated step towards helping a lot of them. I would
like to see an ability to create a startup disk on CD RW,
USB memory, Zip disk, and other removable devices; but
heck, floppy is better than nothing.
14. Shut down Windows and restart with the floppy in
the drive.
15. Choose Boot without CD ROM support to save a
little time.
16. You should boot to this EBD (Emergency Boot Disk)
disk you just made. You should now have a DOS prompt
instead of Windows. If you do not boot to the DOS Prompt
instead of Windows, then you will have to change your BIOS
settings to enable booting from floppy. Be careful in
your BIOS. If you don't know what you are doing, have
someone you trust change your boot priorities so that you
don't mess something up. If you have one of the new
machines that are sold WITHOUT a floppy disk, then life is
not good at the moment. You might have luck booting with
a USB floppy if you can get one, but I won't guarantee
it. If you have a handy computer expert around, then they
might be able to tell you how to get through these
instructions without having to make a new boot floppy.
17. When you get the DOS Prompt type "C:" (without the
quotes) and slam a beefy finger on the Enter key. (this
step changes the current working drive to C)
18. Your "prompt" should change from A: to C: If
not, try 17 again.
19. Then type "attrib -s -h -r _restore" (without the
quotes) and pound the Enter key. This command makes System
Restore's hidden cache of files visible. Note that the
underscore in front of the "restore" is important
20. Then type "ren _restore rest" and smite the Enter
key yet a third time. (This gets around the Windows Me
restriction against deleting reserved system directories,
through the high-tech process of renaming the directory so
Windows doesn't know it is a reserved directory. I know,
DOS die-hards are saying - Dude, I extracted and
recompressed the EBD.CAB file on the EBD/Windows Startup
disk and included the deltree utility in my new super-cab,
and smartdrv so it doesn't take all day. You're right,
deltree on the _restore directory will work, albeit
slowly, but step 27 below also works)
21. Remove the Startup Disk from the floppy drive
22. Give the three-finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Delete), or
press reset, or turn your machine off and back on. (One
of the three).
23. Your machine should boot back into Windows Me now.
24. Double click on My computer, and double-click on
your C drive.
25. Look for the directory "rest" on your C drive. If
you are curious about how much space System Restore
greedily gobbled, then right-click on the rest folder, and
click on Properties. The size listed is how much space
Restore files were taking. If this says xx MB (some small
number of mega-bytes), then I just wasted some of your
time. If it says x GB, xx GB, or xxxx MB where the number
of megabytes or gigabytes listed represents nearly all of
your free disk space on C, then you had the same problem
with System Restore that I had. Now close the properties
window if you opened it.
26. If System Restore was not taking up much space in
the above step, then you might be able to undo these
changes. I have never tried these steps. Right-click on
the rest directory and try to rename rename "rest"
to "_restore". If that does not work, then copy
everything you can from "rest" to the "_restore"
directory, and then delete the "rest" directory we
created. Use msconfig as in the above steps to re-enable
the PCHealth, StateMgr, and SchedulingAgent if you desire.
27. If System Restore WAS eating most of your hard
drive, then click a single time on the "rest" directory,
and then tap the Delete (or Del) key.
28. Confirm deletion of the files, and then if this
was your problem you will have a lot more disk space to
work with.
29. If you run Windows Update once in a while (which
is probably a good idea), then System Restore might
get "fixed" at some point. Therefore, keep these
instructions handy so that you can go through them again
in this unfortunate case.
Note that if you disable the Scheduling Agent, which I DO
recommend, then you should run some of the utilities
manually that it would run for you in the background when
you least expected it.
Click Start - Run, type in "scandisk", and click Ok once
every month or two to scan your drive for errors. I would
also run scandisk just before I run defrag (below). You
don't want to move files around on a hard drive full of
cross-linked files, although defrag checks anyways in case
you forget.
Click Start - Run, type in "defrag", and click Ok once
every six months to defragment your hard drive(s) and
speed application loading.
Note: I am typing these instructions in from memory, so
there might be some errors. Since there are a couple of
people that might run through these instructions, please
post any updates and fixes you notice back as a response
to this string. If you are shy about posting for some
reason, you can email changes to me, and I will try to
post the update when I get a chance.
Also, it took me a while to type this in. If this did not
help you, then I apologize. If it did help you, then I am
going to ask for an additional favor. Spend 5 minutes in
the next week trying to give someone a better day. Smile
at someone at work, talk to your kid, talk to your spouse,
etc.
I will assume you are going to do that, and therefore my
time investment will reap multiple dividends.
Bob Krieter
(Computer Consultant in search of projects)
Jay
file. My system restore is set at 10 %. My computer is
a Dell 4300, it is about a year and a half old. I have
never had a problem with it until now. Today I have 939
mb left on a hard drive that is 40gb. Four days ago I
had 33gb left, I have install nothing since. Thanks again.
>.
>
Bob
Restore problem, although in Me I do not believe I could
set a 10% cap on it like you did.
Let me tell you an Me way of investigating the problem and
see if it works in XP.
Open My Computer, left-click a single time on your C:
drive, and confirm that it still shows up as a 40 GB
Drive! If not, then you have a serious problem, since
drive shrinkage of this magnitute would indicate a dying
drive, a virus, or some other nasty problem. If it still
says a 40GB drive, albeit with perhaps 39GB used, then
double-click on your C: drive.
Under the Tools menu, click on Folder Options, and click
on the view tab in options.
Temporarily enable all the options you can find for
viewing files on your disk. Write down which items you
cleared, so that you can recheck them later on. Tell it
not to hide anything. Specifically, you want to be able
to view hidden files, system files, and protected
operating system files; and also folders for all those
types. Then, under the same view tab, make all folders
show up the same as the current folder (this is a button
in Me) if you can. Now right-click on each folder in your
C drive, left-click properties, and wait a minute if
necessary to let it calculate the disk-space consumed. I
would examine greyed-out folders first (e.g. "_restore"),
as these are folders that used to be hidden and are
candidates for doing stuff behind your back. This process
might take a while, but eventually you should find one
folder or file that is consuming a LARGE chunk of your
hard drive.
Once you find out which folder is eating your drive space,
please post it back here so we can hopefully tell you how
to fix it and what the risks are; and so that our
curiousity can be satisfied!
The hunt is afoot.
>.
>
Jay
your suggestions. If I have to replace the drive I guess
I will. I suppose worse things can happen. Thanks again !!
>.
>
Bob Krieter
Drive failure was just one of many possiblities to
consider and hopefully overrule so that you can move on to
other (more likely) troubleshooting.
If windows indicates your
Capacity is 40GB
Used 39GB
Free 500 MB
or something like that, then I believe your drive is just
fine; replacing it might result in the same problem if you
install the same software again. I would hate to throw
out a working 40GB drive.
The only case in which you need to consider a new drive is
if the capacity reads as 40GB one day, and then suddenly
drops to only a few GB. You did not indicate this is the
case. Even then, you would have to investigate the
problem to determine if the problem is hardware, virus,
overlay, etc.
A potential bad drive situation is where the drive reads
Capacity is 40GB
Used 7 GB
Free 33 GB
on Monday, and then
Capacity is 8GB
Used 7 GB
Free 1 GB
on Friday.
Then you would have to consider the possibility of drive
failure.
In other words, the first step is determining if you have
maintained capacity, but used it up; or if the capacity
itself is disappearing. In most cases, the capacity
remains constant. I have only had two drives fail on me,
and I have maintained a lot of machines. Those two drives
did not diminish capacity, but died suddenly. If a lot of
your drive suddenly goes bad, you would most likely lose
the ability to boot Windows. I just wanted you to look at
the drive capacity as a reality check to make sure.
I apologize for potentially misleading you, but if I had
to guess, I would guess your problem is not hardware.
Jay
message I received, there are about ten of them in a row
with the red X next to all of them. It does not look
good. Unable to move system volume information ( then a
long number) after many attempts, files skipped. It looks
like a system restore problem after all.I do not know what
my next move is now. Thanks again.
>.
>
Bob
(by right-clicking) for each directory on drive C, so that
you can see which directory is taking all of your space.
Once you know the directory, that should help everyone
troubleshoot it and fix it.
>.
>
Bob
(by right-clicking) for each directory on drive C, so that
you can see which directory is taking all of your space.
Once you know the directory, that should help everyone
troubleshoot it and fix it.
>.
>
