openletter Posted February 28, 2009 Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 My 9.7 GB Windows XP Pro partition had somehow gotten corrupted so I reinstalled Windows and during the setup I did a quick format of the partition.After reinstalling Windows and my regular compliment of programs, I have only 1.30 GB of free space, which doesn't make any sense to me.I've ran Disk Cleanup and deleted previous system restores.There are only 4 top level folders on the partition.WINDOWS 5.2 GBProgram Files 1.04 GBDocuments and Settings 192 MBtpfancontrol 368 KBI have folder options set to view hidden files. Based on previous installs, less than 7 GB sounds about right to me, but that isn't the amount Disk Manager or Disk Properties says is available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted February 28, 2009 Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 Get hold of Gparted and and make it a bootable CD. Then look at what is actually on the HD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted February 28, 2009 Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 Don't forget to include in your calculations the effects of these hidden files ?- your SwapFile - pagefile.sys - which is under C:\ and can be = 1.5 x your installed RAM- your hibernation file (if it is enabled) - hiberfil.sys - under C:\ and = your installed RAMboth are protected Operating System files and won't be visible unless you go to Explorer/Tools/Folder Options and untick "hide protected operating system files (Recommended)" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
openletter Posted February 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 Don't forget to include in your calculations the effects of these hidden files ?- your SwapFile - pagefile.sys - which is under C:\ and can be = 1.5 x your installed RAM- your hibernation file (if it is enabled) - hiberfil.sys - under C:\ and = your installed RAMboth are protected Operating System files and won't be visible unless you go to Explorer/Tools/Folder Options and untick "hide protected operating system files (Recommended)"Aha! Pagefile is 2 GB. But the strange thing is that this is the third time I've installed XP on this partition and I've never had this problem before. Usually I'm at around 6 or 7 GB after installation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kawasaki Posted March 1, 2009 Report Share Posted March 1, 2009 maybe you had bad luck this time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hb_Kai Posted March 2, 2009 Report Share Posted March 2, 2009 Did you update download any updates too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
openletter Posted March 2, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 2, 2009 Did you update download any updates too?Yes, but it's all the same updates as before I formatted the partition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted March 2, 2009 Report Share Posted March 2, 2009 Formatting, and reinstalling Windows and programs seems a great waste of energy to me!Why not take a backup (image) after a successful installation, then restore the backup if something happens? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katy Posted March 2, 2009 Report Share Posted March 2, 2009 1. Go to Control Panel -> System and temporarily disable System Restore. That will free up quite a lot of disk space. Then re-enable it if you think you need it. I myself keep it disabled. 2. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Temp. You can delete everything from that folder, it's garbage. DO NOT DELETE THE FOLDER ITSELF, JUST EMPTY IT.3. If you don't use the hibernate feature (I don't) you might wanna disable it, that will kill the hibernate.sys file from the root of C: drive and free some disk space amounting the size of your RAM.4. Go to C:\Windows and delete all the folders in the form $NtUninstallKBXXXXXX$, where X is a digit. They contain lots of files needed if you ever want to uninstall a Windows update. Usualy no one needs to do such a task, so you can lose them. There shoudl also be a similar folder containing the uninstall files for SP3. That can also be deleted if you don't intend to uninstall SP3.5. Go to Services and stop the Automatic Updates serivce, then delete the SoftwareDistribution folder from C:\Windows, then start again the service.After you performed all these tasks and are satisfied with the free space, I recommend a defrag of your C: drive.Let me know how it works. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted March 3, 2009 Report Share Posted March 3, 2009 All this can be very easily (and safely) achieved with CCleaner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katy Posted March 3, 2009 Report Share Posted March 3, 2009 All this can be very easily (and safely) achieved with CCleaner.On one hand, their homepage does not mention anything about System Restore files and Windows Update backup files, which are really hogging the disk.On the other hand, I like to know what happens with my machine. Instead of using a god-knows-what-this-black-box-does software, I preffer doing things by hand. That's when it comes to sensible things like tunning Windows.At least if my machine won't boot, I would know exactly why. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted March 3, 2009 Report Share Posted March 3, 2009 Actually, removing old System Restore points is best done with the Windows Disk Cleanup tool; this will always keep the last restore point.CCleaner is hightly configurable, and we will know exactly what is removed when it runs, including Windows Update backup files & folders. The tool also knows what parts of these WU backups to keep, so that WU still knows what updates are installed.Manually going to delete things off the system *may* be acceptable for advanced users, but never for the average user. CCleaner cleans in a very safe way, and I have never heard of anybody not being able to boot after using it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dencandy Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 I heartily endorse what Pat Willener writes above, especially regarding System Restore. Using it is THE safest and easiest way for any but advanced users to undo the effects of faulty installations of programs & updates and many other problems. For those reasons, rather than disable it, I recommend you reduce the amount of space allocated to it. Open System Restore on click on System Restore settings on the left side. On the System Properties menu that opens up, hi-light the disk/partition where your system files are located (usually C:) & click on Settings.This will open another menu with a slider where you can adjust the amount of space on that disk/partition that's allocated solely to System Restore. You can experiment with the amount of space you allocate to see how many restore points you get as a result. You might find, for example, that 5% is sufficient. If you have other partitions with only 3rd party programs, data and back-ups on, you can reduce System Restore to the minimum as it will never be used & it's just wasted space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katy Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 Hey Pat, are you part of the CCleaner development team? :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted March 6, 2009 Report Share Posted March 6, 2009 I am a software developer, but in no way affiliated with CCleaner or Piriform.But I have used CCleaner since its very early existence, and so have many other members of this forum. Keeping a computer system clean of garbage is an important task, so I have tried quite a number of cleaning tools. Nothing - nothing - comes even somewhere close to CCleaner! It is a very thorough and safe tool.P.S. I do not use, or recommend to use, the registry cleaning portion ("issues") of CCleaner. I simply do not believe in so-called "registry cleaners". I believe that leaving the registry alone is the best approach. "Cleaning" the registry of unused items does not, in any way, improve Windows performance. But "clean up" one wrong key, and all hell can break loose... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katy Posted March 6, 2009 Report Share Posted March 6, 2009 "Cleaning" the registry of unused items does not, in any way, improve Windows performance.I disagree with that. The registry is extensively accessed by the OS and apps, so it's cached heavily, almost 100% all the time. The smaller the registry the more memory available to disk caching (and other tasks). I've seen systems with 300 MB of registry, if you can imagine that. So, how is cleaning the registry now ?But "clean up" one wrong key, and all hell can break loose...Oh yeah, that I know for sure ! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted March 6, 2009 Report Share Posted March 6, 2009 I disagree with that. The registry is extensively accessed by the OS and apps, so it's cached heavily, almost 100% all the time. The smaller the registry the more memory available to disk caching (and other tasks)."Cleaning" the registry does not compress it, so it won't get any smaller, however many keys or values you remove.There are actually registry compaction programs that do compact the registry to its minimal size to hold all the stored values. However, you can run all the "registry cleaners" you want - it won't shrink your registry size by more than 1%~2%.There are, however, programs that do improve registry hives, by rebuilding them. NTREGOPT is one of them. However, I still prefer to leave my registry alone, as I don't have any problems with my 7-year old XP system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dencandy Posted March 7, 2009 Report Share Posted March 7, 2009 An interesting discussion... For an ordinary bloke like me how do I know if there's a registry problem and something needs to be done about it?Two possibilities come to mind:1 Something is not working properly, e.g. there are crashes, slow start-ups, hangs on shut-down, etc.2 The registry has got too big & is consuming disk space with a detrimental effect.With regard to item 1, I've never found that cleaning the registry has the slightest effect on these sorts of problems because if there is an issue here you need to find the individual registry key(s) that are causing the problem and edit them to the correct value - a precision job that to my knowledge cannot be done by any registry cleaner.With regard to 2, I imagine that you'd need to have tens of thousands of unused registry keys before there was a significant effect on hard disk space.Nonetheless, personally I still use CCleaner's registry cleaner once a week simply because like to keep things neat & tidy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katy Posted March 7, 2009 Report Share Posted March 7, 2009 Pat: well, the registry fragmentation is something new to me, but now that you told me, it makes perfect sense. But ... there must be something else behind the scenes because on those systems with huge registry files performance did improve after registry cleanup. My guess would be that Windows caches files not entirely but on clusters. So, the registry clusters with large gaps in them get accessed far less than the those fully filled, thus they stay out of the cache. But this is terra icognita for me right now, so I can't sustain this discussion beyond this point. And yes, on a system used with care, the registry overload is insignificant. I am talking about people which download and install apps on a daily basis, as a hobby. I've seen machines with like 40 icons in the tray I call these guys "Hans der User" :)Dencandy: cleaning the registry may only improve performance, not solve problems. Well, exception to that are viruses, trojans etc. which usualy rely on registry in order to get control of the system. The performance improvement comes from the memory occupied by the registry, not from the disk space you might free. I say "might" because of the registry fragmentatin phenomenon that Pat just pointed, which rules out the possibility of gaining disk space on registry cleanup. And the 300 MB registry I encountered is by far a most EXTREME case. But nowadays 300 MB is close to nothing when it comes to disk space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted March 7, 2009 Report Share Posted March 7, 2009 I fully endorse C Cleaner. I use it every day prior to shutdown, and it probably takes all of ten seconds. I also use the registry cleaner option, and am completely happy with C Cleaner. Remember, it does offer to create a back up before cleaning the registry. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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