Windows XP- How much hard drive space should it really use?

OK I have two computers 1 laptop and one desktop. The desktop was installed in Jan 2000 and we have it updated to windows xp.

Out of 40 Gigs of space I only have 108mb available.

My windows program itself is 27.8 gig of space. I have deleted as much stuff as I can, but why is windows so big?

What can I do to relieve some space.

I have already run ccleaner and all the other cleanup things and I had defrag the drive. Does anyone have any ideas to try.

Suzyv98
NY

 

W O W ! ! Just out of curiosity, I checked my Windows folder (C:\Windows) and it's only a bit over 2gb. I have no idea why yours would be so big. It shouldn't be. It could be that you're loaded up with junk files. I strongly recommend that you read the following article and follow the steps outlined: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106650 CCleaner is mentioned in the article as a good drive and registry cleaner, USE IT! It's excellent. I also recommend running CleanUp! It is very thorough when it comes to removing unneeded clutter from your hard drive (a free download http://majorgeeks.com/CleanUp_d4895.html). If you're into music and/or videos and/or pictures, there's a good chance that they're using up lots of space on your hard drive. Back them up to CD/DVD to make room on your hard drive, or just delete the ones you no longer want or need. Personally, I format my hard drive and reload Windows 3 or 4 times a year just keep things running smooth and completely clean out any 'dead wood' from my PC. I download TONS of media files and even on a 250gb hard drive, space disappears fast, so I'm always looking for sale prices on blank CDs and DVDs

BTW- with hard drives getting to be so affordable these days (250gb drives are under $100), you really should consider upgrading to a larger drive. It's fairly easy to copy your old drive in its entirety to a new drive so won't lose anything....

 

Wow man!:eek XP just by itself should be under 2GB IIRC or even less plus space for System Restore files and a page file. I have XP on a 20GB partition and it's not even full yet even though I've stupidly installed all programs on the boot drive. You have any games loaded in there besides what dlb said. Maybe do a search for files larger than say 1MB. I know there are free apps on the front page here better than XP's pooper TreeSize Free is one. Look in diagnostics.

Something else you may want to look at is if you have the $NTuninstall files, which are your backups from an SP install in the Windows folder, incase you want to revert back to a previous release for some reason or other, you'll have to unhide protected files first.

 

The file I mentioned is just my "windows file" that is NOT including any pictures, I have some pictures and videos but nothing more than 4 gig I have de-fragged once a week and ccleaned everytime I go online,and even if I delete a program I never see any improvements in my folders.


I do have $NYuninstall files, windows installer patches, I know I could delete some of this stuff but I don't know where to start.

Thanks for all your help

Suzyv98
NY

 

My main point was finding the largest folders you have and addressing those first using TreeSize Free or whatever similar app you like and then scan, it will default to ordering your folders in descending size, then just look for the largest files, and we can help you better if we know what the files are and if you need them or not.

As far as the $Ntuninstall files are concerned, my two largest ones are $hf_mig$@235MB and $NtServicePackUninstall$ @461MB which is SP2. Keep in mind that you can't go back if you delete them from the recycle bin, which will help your congestion but is still a cupful of water in a gallon bucket.

If your rig is working fine then I would delete those two for starters, just wait for some confirmation first before following mine or anyone else's opinion, except for moderators of course, what worked for me may not work in your case.

You should have, at the most, half of 27GB used. A case in point is I have Far Cry (game) loaded and it takes up 3GB on its own and was very easily found.

Let's start from the top culprits and work our way down. With 108MB left, you must be getting warning pop-ups by now.

 

I use Scanner 2.8 to check what file/folder hogs I have.

This displays your hard drives as a circular pie chart and quickly enables you to drop down through Drives---> Folders--->Files to see where the hogs are.

A tip. To speed things up, although it is still fairly quick, unplug any external drives so as to just sort on C: drive only.

Hope this helps, Bazza

PS: My thumbnail shows 2 drives (C: and T

My c:\windows is just over 4 gigs, for comparison. Baz

 

OK here is the tree. As you can see the installer section is huge!!!

Is there hope?

Suzyv98

 

You are using FAT32 format, with each file on your system using 32,000 byte cluster size.

This is a waste of your hard disk space. If you were to format to NTFS with 4000 byte cluster size (for example), you should regain a lot of space on your drive.

For example any file that actually requires less than 32,000 bytes has 32,000 bytes allocated to it. Most shortcuts need less than 1000 bytes, yours are allocating 32000 bytes with 31000 not able to be used.

Then again, I could be wrong. I will wait for those more expert than I to comment.

Bazza

 

Don't forget there are a lot more Folders / Sub Folders / Files in Windows than those shown in your screenshot. I've got nearly 22,000 files in my C:\Windows Folder (and sub-folders, of course). 1670 Folders. See thumbnail. Bazza

 

some digging and came up with this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/274533
i know it maynot be what you need, but i also found out that the windows/installer folder supposedly holds installer files from when you installed programs, and keeps them for when you uninstall programs...it's was also stated, that it's not recommended to just go ahead and remove the files randomly...However, what i would think, is that you can temporarily move those files to another drive (if you have one available) and see what happens, or you can take a look into that folder (it's hidden, so you would have to uncheck the option to hide protected operating system files) or you can simply type in the address bar of an explorer window (My Computer for example) C:\windows\installer
and look and see if there's anything that might look out of place...maybe pay attention to any files that are identical in names, and maybe in there multiple times.

 

Doug Knox's HotFix removal tool will quickly clean up most of the Hotfixes, quickly and easilly: http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_hotfix_backup.htm
I recently saw a laptop where one of the Office updates failed and retried every day (!), resulting in over 8GB in 150 copies of the same file.

 

I'll repeat what I posted earlier. Check out the original PDF thumbnail.

32K cluster sizes will eat up your hard drive space and leave lots of "slack space" that cannot be used for anything else.

To quote from my XP "Bible", although it applies to any MS OS.

The OP's hard drive uses FAT 32 and 32,768 byte clusters. What this means is that a shortcut (for example) that only needs around 1,000 bytes takes up 32,768 bytes will a resultant waste of over 31,000 bytes. This soon adds up to lots of lost space depending on the ratio of <32,768 byte files to > 32,768 byte files.

I don't know if you can alter cluster size in FAT32 partitions on the fly, or have to re-format, or convert to NTFS with a smaller cluster size (at the same time).

I know you can convert from FAT32 to NTFS without the loss of data (but I'd recommend a FULL backup) just in case. I don't know for sure if you can go from FAT32 (32,768 byte clusters) to NTFS (4,096 byte clusters --as a suggested figure) in the same exercise, but I seem to remember you can.

Don't trust me on this. Wait, or ask, for more expert advice from other MG members or geeky friends. Bazza

 

I think you have an unnecessary, large file taking up space in the Windows/Installer/Files folder. My Windows/Installer/Files is 581MB yours is 23.8GB. Download WinDirStat it will allow you to expand the Windows/Installer/Files folder and look for what I suspect is one very large file. Windows Explorer doesn't show a Windows/Installer/Files folder and TreeSize doesn't look like it allows you to expand the folder to see individual files.

Try WinDirStat, and after it runs (it takes a few minutes) scroll down to Windows>Installer then click on the (+) to expand Files. My largest filename.msp is 219Mb, What is yours? If it is very large it may well be the problem.

 

Try this.

1. Go to Explorer
2. Click on your "C" drive.
3. Scroll down to your Windows Folder in your "C" drive. It will probably be one of the last ones listed.
4. Right click on your C:\Windows Folder.
5. Right click on PROPERTIES.
6. Write down your SIZE ON DISK and SIZE numberrs shown.
7. Divide SIZE ON DISK (either figure) into SIZE (either figure).

For an efficient cluster size rating, the answer from (7.) above, should be over 90% (0.90) mine is 94% (0.94).

What is yours? Post back here when you can and we can progress further. Bazza

 

converting to NTFS may be a good idea, however, 100 mb of free space may not be enough to do it...Im not sure of specifics, but I think converting requires some free space. As for how much, i'm looking that up now...

 

The Yellow block you see is 1 pagefile.sys 767 MB (804,257,792 bytes) And the BIG BLUE Box (23.1G)is a bunch of little boxes and they are all Windows installers patches(.MSP) The largest one of those is 46MB.
Other BIG HOGS:
win zip files 1.2G
exe files 1.1G

Sorry it took so long, but life happens. Thanks for all your help.

Suzyv

 

Did you try any of my suggestions?
What were the results?

Bazza

 

size on disk: 27.9

size: 27.5

Cluster size rating is .98 (If I did it right)

I did use the pie but it didn't break it down as much as the other program did. I have to look into the NTFS I think that is over my head, but I am willing to try anything at this point.

Thanks for all your help.

SuzyV

 

Suzy, I think that proves that cluster size is wrong for you. But I think you will not be able to convert to NTFS on your hard drive as you have little spare space to do it, as has been said earlier.

Other opinions welcome to step in.

You may have to back up to DVD's, or an external hard drive (borrow one if you have to). Make sure you validate your backup.

Then re-format your hard drive to NTFS with 4 meg clusters and restore your backup.

Better still, if $$$ are OK, buy a bigger hard drive and format to NTFS.
Then restore your backup to your new drive.

Your new drive will be bigger than your old drive, and faster too.

Bazza

 

I just reviewed all of the posts in this thread and am convinced you have the problem I mentioned earlier which is that some update is failing to install and you now have hundreds of copies of that file. I simply went to the installer folder, chose View -> Details, clicked on the Size column label to sort by size, and scanned the folder. Hers was an update to Outlook which was not even installed on the system (causing the installation failure) so I selected them all and did Shift-Delete (bypasses Recycle Bin), freeing up over 8GB on her system. Its been three months now, and there have been no ill effects.

 

WOW, I think I beat your record. I am glad you OK'D me to delete them. I didn't really know where to start or which ones were copies, but when 255 copies were downloaded at the same time on the same date that kinda helps.

As you can see I have 65% FREE Space. My husband gives it a week, (LOL) before it fills up again.

Thank you for all your hard work and never giving up on me.

Suzyv
NY

 

If you go to www.windowsupdate.com and tell it to do custom, you will get a list of the updates M$ thinks you need. You can then tell it to install them (paying attention to which one fails) and run it a second time or, if you know which one is failing, uncheck it. When you do that, you'll get a box to not remind you again and, if you check that, it won't try to install that update in the future which will keep it from filling up your hard drive again.

 

Glad you got it fixed, Suzy. :major :cool Now I'd think about going to NTFS (and 4 meg clusters) to gain even more room, IMO. Bazza