Am I runni9ng two os ?

[zeroseven]

I recently reinstalled XP and then installed SP2.

However my figures for the C drive just dont add up. I can account for maybe 7gb of space used, yet properties shows 15gb used leaving me less than 1gb on that drive.

How can I check what is ACTUALLY on that drive, not what appears to be on the drive, and is there a way to safely remove any duplicate / unused files etc

[bvw]

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Might give you a clue.

[-pops-]

You can look at which files are on the drive by going to My Computer and double clicking on the drive icon. You may get a message cautioning you about looking in the folders if you go any further and you should be very careful to take heed of that.

As a point on interest, the computer I'm sending this from is said to be 76.3GB with 56.5GB available space (used space therefore 19.8GB). The drive contains WXP and the programs I use on this machine. Another machine has a C drive with 23.5GB used by WXP and programs.

Even though your capacity in terms of hard drive space should be theoretically enough, in my opinion, it isn't really of sufficient size to accomodate XP and programs comfortably.

I take the view that when a hard drive looks as though it is approaching half full, it is time to think about increasing the size of the drive or pruning out some (lots of) junk. As well as Windows using disc space for storage, it also uses large amounts of available disc capacity for file manipulation during operating - things you may not ever see or be aware of but which occur, nevertheless. For example, in working with AVI files for conversion and production of DVDs, you can easily use 40GB+ of hard disc space for each hour of video produced. This is all recovered at the end of the processing and you may never know it has been used but the process would not have been possible without that space being available.

[zeroseven]

When I reinstalled XP I’d used about 7gb of the c drive. When I reinstalled and loaded in the same software it came up at 15gb. Also I did a search for a couple of small programs that were on the original set up but that I’d left off the new set up. Search found them and stated they were on the c drive. Yet searching through my computer did not reveal them, even with show hidden folder ticked.

I’m not asking because I’m stuck for space, I’ve got over 500gb on this system, I’m just curious. Also its probably not doing me any favours to have the old stuff clogging up the registry etc

[Scarecrow Man]

"Am I runni9ng two os ?"

If you formatted, no. If you installed to the same partition as an old installation you probably have unlinked files from the old OS.

[zeroseven]

Well I thought I'd formatted, but then I dont remember beinga asked for the partitions sizes so.....

If I di have unlinked files how do I get rid of them?

[Scarecrow Man]

You can delete them manually... but I would DEFINATLEY advise against this.

Chances are the install formatted for you. Do you remember chosing a place to install? If you chose a location with windows already installed it should ask you to choose another location, but I think you can bypass it.

[zeroseven]

I dont remember in all honesty, but then I dont remember saying I agreed to get married either......

I would take a punt on deleting manually, but where are they? They dont show. I cant search for them because I dont know what they are all called. There must be thousands of them

[Scarecrow Man]

Just an example:

you have Windows installed. You installed Windows again to the same partition. If there is already a bootable Windows (might be the same for a bad one) one will use C:\WINDOWS and the other will use C:\WINDOWS2.

If you have 2 differen't Windows folders, it has been installed twice. If not, it's either been installed on a differen't partition, or has formated the original.

[zeroseven]

Thanks for that Scarecrow - I'll check when I get cak to the desktop. I remember no such C:\WINDOWS2 folder however, I'm sure I'd have spotted that

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I recently had a very similar problem. Found a small app called DiskSpacePlus (do a search on http://www.download.com/) and installed it. I was surprised where some incredible huge data files were hidden!

With this tool it is really [REALLY] very easy to find where your disk space is used up. It's free to try...