Can't delete files on Vista

Hi everyone,

Not quite sure if this is where I would post this problem, so I apologize in advance if it's in the wrong area.

Anyway, I was on my sister's Dell laptop today and I decided to delete majority of the media files that I had downloaded in the past to clear up space for her. For some reason her disk memory keeps dropping and we don't know what the problem is. Lately, it's dropping below the recommended at least 200mb mark. I don't think it's her temp files since I tell her to clear cache and disk cleanup and cclean at the end of each day.

So I deleted what I believe was almost 3gb worth of stuff. However, I check the amount of free space on C: and it said only about 630mb free. I restarted and now it says 1.28gb. I did a search on the files and the computer still finds them. I tried to delete them manually and the files aren't found.

I can't delete the files as they were supposedly deleted, so I'm guessing that's why the files are found. Is there any solution to this?

 

Have you emptied the recycle bin?

 

Yes, I have emptied it. It even shows up as empty. But now I'm having trouble getting her Ccleaner and Disk Cleanup to work. Ccleaner gets stuck around 28% and Disk Cleanup processes until about halfway and neither of them move any farther to complete.

 

Also try running cCleaner in safe mode. Also run the registry cleaner part, making the back up when prompted.

How big is the HD to start with? How much used?

Also, what anti virus and other security are you running? What OS?

Any other odd behavior like pop up messages, esp. at start up?

 

I'll try running cCleaner in safe mode. But I actually did run the registry cleaner prior to making this post, but I didn't make a back up.

The HD is 61.9gb for C: and for the recovery 9.99gb. Right now, I'd say about 60.5gb is used since there's only 1.4gb free and I think about 6.99gb for the recovery disk is used.

Anti-virus is McAfee and I think that's all that she has installed. OS is Windows Vista Home, 32-bit.

Before I tried fixing my sister's laptop, she had a pop up for a "Live kernal event" and then an "Xvid.dll Not Found Error". She also mentions that her screen will go black and stay that way or sometimes a display driver error will pop up. The exact error is "nvlddmkm.sys stopped responding and recovered". At the moment, there's also a pop up saying "FLV Source Filter - build 2006.02.28" with a swishzone.com logo.

Other than these popups, no other odd behavior or anything.

I'll recheck the full path. I was going to try and restore the laptop, but when I check, there are no restore points. It just asks if I want to create one, which I find strange.