Lost Memory

Hey: I need some help concerning my memory. I had about 25 gig free space then I installed UT2004 which was supposed to be 9 gig. Somehow I then had only 11 gig left. I then installed about 25 meg worth of software for my canon camera. My free space then came to only 4. 27 gig. I uninstalled both of them and still only had 4.30 gig.

I have run norton, ms-antispyware, spybot, and adaware but there's nothing found. I've also run scandisk, checkdisk, diskcleanup, ccleaner, and regscrub, and deleted most of my system restore points but none of this has helped.

I can't even install my old files now. Please help.

 

Welcome to MG. While you are waiting for a proper expert to reply, have you cleared your Norton Recycle Bin? Norton keep stuff until you deliberately delete it. Bazza

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I can't locate a 'recycle bin' for norton, but i always delete everything in quarantine. How do I get to the bin? but could it take up all those gigs of space?

 

What Norton's are you using? Is it Norton's Anti Virus or Nortons SystemWortks, or what The recycle Bin is part of Morton SystemWorks, not Norton AV which I suspect you are using. Bazza

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Yeah, i'm using Norton Antivirus. thanks a lot though.

 

I noticed you didn't mention defragging the drive in your first post, that could possibly reclaim some (maybe all) of that space. Try clicking Analyze first to see if some of the UT2004 files/directories show up in the box as fragmented.

If you try to start the defrag, it may say that it recommends having at least 15% of the drive as free space (I've told it to go ahead only once before when I had no problem losing data, so I don't have enough confidence to say just go ahead - I'm willing to bet something COULD go wrong, since the message comes up). Maybe back up your most important files to be safe.

 

Does your folders sizes add up to your hardisk usage?
Just add up the first layer of folders in each partition.

 

I did defragment my drive (even though I didn't have enough space to run it). I didn't get back any space but nothing happened to my space.
I don't know about my folder sizes adding up to my hardisk usage. Any empty folders I have read as 0kb. How do I add up the folders in each partition again?

 

Try these 3. All free, don't conflict with each other, and each finds stuff the other 2 miss.

Cleanup! http://www.stevengould.org/
EmpTemp http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1575
and CrapCleaner aka CCleaner http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4191

Beware, as the defaults are set, they will clean out all your cookies and your URL history as well as other stuff they consider "crap"..

If you want to keep your URL history,etc., you will have to reset defaults, probably in all 3.

I use all of them every day with the standard defaults. I keep any URL I want in my Favouites, otherwise they are gone. These programs will also delete other temp files and your Index.dat files (that grow like topsy, every net session). Don't worry about deleting Index.dat files as Windows recreate them every bootup, (if they are missing). Otherwise Index.dat files just continue to grow and grow.

You will probably be surprised at the amount of space regained, especially if you haven't been regularly housekeeping. Run Cleanup! first and it will tell you at the end hpw many files deleted and space freed up. Turn the volume up for a laugh, as well.

The first time you run these, don't be surprised if they take a long time to run. The longer it is since you did a housekeeping session, the more crap they will find and the more time they will take. I once deleted over 60,000 files from a friends PC.

I run all 3 every day and they take no time at all on a regularly cleaned system.

After you run all 3 you will ahve to defrag again (bummer) but you will see that your hard drive diagram looks like someone has patterned a shotgun shell on your hard drive contents. Defragging will solve this. Let us know how you go. Bazza

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Thanks bigbazza. I already had ccleaner, and i run it with regscrub everyday. the windows cleaner seemed to get rid of many more files but I only gained a couple of megabytes back. I am yet to restart and then run defrag so I'll update you on what happens.

 

The defrag didn't regain the space. I'm now certain that it's a reading error of some sort cause I checked the properties of all files on drive c and found that they only come up to 16 gig (including hidden folders). If I just click on drive c: though it reads as 4 gig free space and 37 gig total space.

 

Sorry, I'm out of ideas but I would suggest that you backup all your essential documents, photos, music, etc., while you wait for someone to come up with better solutions.

I assume that you have you run scandisk/chkdisk? What results?

One idea has just occurred to me.. MG search link.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/search.php and enter hard+drive+utilities

Note the plus sign in between each word.

There should be something there, either free or trial version, that will allow you to check the integrity of your hard drive, and/or, the integrity of your data.

I use a commercial product so have not tried any listed. Best of luck,

Maybe some MG'er can recommend program/s. Baz

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Thanks a lot everyone. I found and fixed the problem. My IBM Restore was making backups of my system and saving them which took up all the space. I stopped that, deleted the backups and regained my space. Thanks again.