Win7/64 Laptop Housecleaning Results

Hi! I have a Windows 7/64 laptop at a day program, and its hard drive is worth only 74.4GB. It only had 8.19GB free. I managed to increase that number to 10.1GB by removing unnecessary copies of files, emptying the Recycle Bin and compressing a few folders. I want to compress some more folders. I tried to compress some folders in the Program Files folders, but the computer wanted administrator privileges. I don't remember how I responded, but I'm using a user account, but I killed the administrator password a long time ago, so that should've worked. I also want to compress the Windows folder but am worried about the password and files being used.

 

I compressed some more folders and removed some superfluous copies of programs and brought the free hard drive space from 10.4GB to 11.8GB. I am looking to buy a 256GB USB drive to augment the computer's hard drive, or should I get an external hard drive?

 

BTW, is there a way to compress folders such as "Program Files" or "Windows" in such a way that I won't get an error stating that certain files are in use? Maybe a certain mode where such files wouldn't be in use?

 

I recently asked my mother to buy me a 256GB flash drive, and it arrived in the mail yesterday morning. Yesterday afternoon, I brought it to my day program and tried it out. I didn't put anything on it but did quick-format it with the NTFS file system so I can compress its contents if needed. I also tried to uninstall a program using the Uninstall Program control panel. The program was an internet browser with "AVG" in its name. That helped out a lot, but the uninstall got stuck in one spot at a little more than half-way through, so I had to use the Task Manager to kill the application. I have to go back there tomorrow afternoon and see if I can try again.