My Documents and Settings file is overflowing

[WA Scott]

Running XP Pro w/sp2 and am running out of space on the 80 gig hard drive so I started deleting old video files, moved images to another hard drive, ran CCleaner and recovered about 1 gig. Couldn't figure out what was using up the space so I downloaded Windirstat to analyze the C drive and found an unbelievable 47 Gb of files in documents and settings. Downloaded DoubleKiller file remover utility and ended up with a 3.7 mb document of temp, cache, and files associated with primarily 6 programs/utilities.

Now I'm frankly overwhelmed with the task of cleaning this up. If I start deleting files it might screw up one of the programs. If I uninstall the program it would still take forever to manually delete. So now I'm thinking of reformatting. I hate to do this because the system runs great.

Any thoughts anyone?

Is this common for a pc that was last formatted 3 years ago?

Here's a sample of some of the files from Adobe Bridge that I don't even use.

tips_cap.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\zh_TW\_media\ 2943 12/1/2005 1:05:38 PM 55A00FBB

10 color_cap.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\cs\_media\ 2944 12/1/2005 1:05:28 PM F9C6C184

10 folders_cap_long.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\es\_media\ 2990 12/1/2005 1:05:30 PM 00F1EFF9

10 files_cap_long.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\fi\_media\ 2990 12/1/2005 1:05:30 PM 00F1EFF9

10 folders_cap_long.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\fi\_media\ 2990 12/1/2005 1:05:30 PM 00F1EFF9

10 files_cap_long.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\fr\_media\ 2990 12/1/2005 1:05:32 PM

10 rss_bg.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\it\_media\ 3608 12/1/2005 1:05:34 PM 87956D1F

10 rss_bg.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\ja\_media\ 3608 12/1/2005 1:05:26 PM 87956D1F

00 folder_head.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\ko\_media\ 4330 12/1/2005 1:05:34 PM 8CEB5D82

00 folders_head_sm.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\nl\_media\ 4643 12/1/2005 1:05:34 PM

00 color_bg.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\pt\_media\ 5932 12/1/2005 1:05:36 PM CAF0918C

00 background.png C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge\Resources\ru\_media\ 24543 12/1/2005 1:05:36 PM 26CD3B22

Note the file size to the right, there's hundreds of these Adobe files on top of everything else.

What is happening, how do I control it in the future. Something has to be wrong with how this computer is configured!!

[doug]

Welcome to the Forum. The very first thing to do is to ensure that you have a complete backup so you can go back if anything goes wrong. You will get plenty of advice from here.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Just from the sample you gave, you say that you don't use Adobe Bridge. Why not uninstall it, then delete the entire Adobe Bridge subfolder (if the uninstaller does not remove it itself)?

As for the files under Documents and Settings; are these under different user ids? If so, can you remove these users? Or run CCleaner under each userid?

What is the complete size of your Documents and Settings folder? Mine is 4.5GB, and I don't think that's too large.

[andsome]

Just from the sample you gave, you say that you don't use Adobe Bridge. Why not uninstall it, then delete the entire Adobe Bridge subfolder (if the uninstaller does not remove it itself)?

As for the files under Documents and Settings; are these under different user ids? If so, can you remove these users? Or run CCleaner under each userid?

What is the complete size of your Documents and Settings folder? Mine is 4.5GB, and I don't think that's too large.

Mine is only 645MB. :D

[WA Scott]

Just from the sample you gave, you say that you don't use Adobe Bridge. Why not uninstall it, then delete the entire Adobe Bridge subfolder (if the uninstaller does not remove it itself)?

As for the files under Documents and Settings; are these under different user ids? If so, can you remove these users? Or run CCleaner under each userid?

What is the complete size of your Documents and Settings folder? Mine is 4.5GB, and I don't think that's too large.

Mine is only 645MB. :D

Thanks for the response, but based on the sheer number, I was hoping for more comment. "Documents and Settings, 43.7 GB, 61,206 items, 56,831 files, 4,375 sub directories, even my relatively new laptop's D&S directory is 13.4 GB out of only 22 .3 used." Does anyone ever clean out this directory and if so, how? Assuming I had the space,would this directory continue to grow even if I never installed any additional programs,apps or whatever?

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Documents and Settings is used for all kinds of things, by all users, and by all installed applications. It's hard to say what is using your D&S without actually looking at your computer. Also, again, do you have multiple users that are using (or have used) this Windows system?

[WA Scott]

Documents and Settings is used for all kinds of things, by all users, and by all installed applications. It's hard to say what is using your D&S without actually looking at your computer. Also, again, do you have multiple users that are using (or have used) this Windows system?

There's three people using it, one admin and two limited but activity has dropped off since everybody has their own units.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Run CCleaner from each user account. Also check for applications that are only installed on individual accounts.