Free Disk Space Mystery

[nethermead]

Got a weird one and can't find anything about it online.

The free space on my Windows XP C: partition is disappearing. I now have about 100 meg out of 14 gigs free. BUT there's only 6.5 gigs of files on the drive. I should have over 7 gigs free!

The paging file is set up on my E: partition, there's none on C:. I can't open the System Volume Information folder to check its size. I've cleared out old files, uninstalled stuff, checked for viruses, trojans, and adware, and everything looks ok.

Any ideas?

 

[rogue_jedi]

if you have norton (or a similar program) that keeps files "there" even after they have been deleted & removed from recycle bin (i.e. any "undeleter" program) then this happens. empty that if you have it.

other than that, i dunno... hope this helps.

 

[Elledan]

It's called System Restore, and is a feature of WinXP (and WinME). Basically it keeps a copy of previous versions of files and settings, to revert to in case something goes wrong (bad driver, etc.).

It can be disabled, but I don't know where, as I don't use WinXP.

 

[Impact9]

Just Right Click on My Computer and go to Properties. Go to the System Restore tab and edit the settings to reduce system usage. Also do the same for the Recycle Bin and your temporary internet files. I turn off system restore on non-system drives (d,e,f) and recycle bin on my unimportant drives.

 

[nethermead]

Yup! That was it, System Restore was the issue.

Weird thing is, I had disabled it a long time ago but apparently it didn't take. When I tried to select its tab in the System app earlier today, I got a "Cannot run dll as app" exception and the System app would close. Had to go into the XP Services admin tool and disable it there. Next boot, all 7.5 gigs are now free and System Restore should behave from now on.

Thanks all!