Hard drive "full"

Ok, the hard drive on my Dell laptop with Windows XP says that's it's practically full, and I can't figure out what's taking up all the space. This is really weird.

The hard drive says it has 33 GBs of space in total, and of that only about 300 MBs of free space available. I've deleted unneeded software that I've never used or rarely used, I've deleted all unneeded files I could think of, I've run virus scans, I've run searches for every kind of file I can think of that might be stockpiled in some hidden folder somewhere, etc. But I am not making any progress. The drive hovers around 300 MBs of free space no matter what I do.

I can't for the life of me figure out what in the world can be taking up so much space. This is real frustrating. Any suggestions?

Thank you!

 

Ok, last month I posted on here that my hard drive on my laptop is "full" but it shouldn't be. Here's the thread I posted on:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showpost.php?p=1240762&postcount=5

I have a Dell Inspiron 6000. It has Windows XP. It has Service Pack 2.

I followed all the directions for basic maintenance given by Mark Trent in the above listed post, but the hard drive still appears to be "full." There is only something like 400 or 500 MB of free space on a hard drive that is supposed to be 33 GB. I can't imagine what could be taking up so much space.

Any other advice? Thanks in advance for any input!

 

You wanna look for a program called "ExplorerXp". Its a free program for xp that will let you see what is on your harddrive and the size of each file. Start there and see if you can not track down the issue.

 

I like WinDirStat for looking at what is taking up space on a HD. It gives a graphical interface where each file is shown as a box. The largest blocks are the largest files, click on them to see where they are located.

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Another quick tip is in My Computer click on C: and right click the Windows folder and select Properties and get its approx size and do the same for Program Files folder. Add those two together and subtract from your 33GB total to see how much room you are looking to find.

 

Thank you! What a useful program, that worked. I think I have identified the primary issue using this program. Only problem now is it won't let me delete the culprit.

I found a folder called "Virus Defs," which is in the "Symantec Shared" folder, which is in the "Common Files" folder, which is in the "Program Files" folder on the C drive.

Well, this Virus Defs folder is full of dozens and dozens of folders dating back the last year and a half or so, right now totaling just over 20 GB. Maybe about 90% of those folders end in ".tmp" and most are right around 60 MB. Each one of those folders is full of a bunch of crap that I don't recognize.

Problem is, it won't let me delete anything in the Virus Defs folder. I can't delete the 20 GB Virus Defs folder as a whole, I can't delete the 60 MB .tmp folders inside it individually, I can't delete the files in the .tmp folders individually.

So, something is somehow adding another 60 MB folder to this Virus Defs folder every few days. Two questions:

1. How do I make it stop doing this?

2. How do I delete the 20 GB of crap that's already accumulated?

Thanks for any tips!!!

(For reference, the hard drive is 33.4 GB total, with 33.1 GB Used, and 309 MB Free right now.)

 

WOW! That worked. Thank you very much. I now have almost 24 GB of Free Space on my hard drive.

Amazing that it was NORTON itself the whole time that was the problem.

I just hope I don't get a virus now that I've deleted Norton. I'll download that other thing you mentioned.

 

Honestly, I don't know why Windows doesn't come with that automatically. It's like they want the user to be in the dark about where some files end up.

 

The laptop is offline right now. I'm on my desktop reading this message board.

So when I'm ready, I'll hop online and and download what I need to the laptop and then hop back off until I get the new protection installed.

Thanks for the firewall tip.