Hello Eveyone,
I had a thread up a few days ago about me trying to fix a notebook of my wifes friend. Well, I got the 4 virus cleaned off the computer, got the registry fixed but the stupid thing is still running butt slow. The problem seems to virtual memory or the lack of it. The stupid thing has a 7 gig HD and only 230mgs free! And I cannot figure out how to get any more space on the thing. I have went through the installed programs and there really isn’t anything on there that can be removed. Just XP, Word and a few others. No personal files at all. What am I missing here? XP cannot be taking 7gigs of space by itself, can it? The only program I am not familiar with is something called Microsoft.NetFramework. It seems to be taking about a 1/2 gig with all the different versions installed. Since it is a MS item I am not sure if I should attempt to delete it or not. I tried to “compress” the drive, but each time I attempt it I get an error message saying “access denied”.
I really am at my wit’s end and tired of messing with this. I do have a copy of XP and I am thinking of just wiping the HD and starting with a clean install for her. Of course there is no CD drive, but I have found instructions on the web that shows how to install XP from a thumb drive. Of course I don’t have a thumb drive here, but I do have a SD card with enough space. Wondering if that would work in place of the thumb drive.
Stupid Dell netbook. What kind of company ships any kind of computer with a hard drive almost filled to capacity? :smack:
Have you ran chkdsk to see if the disk has ruptured files? My Computer, Drive properties, tools, check for errors - click the option to “scan for and attempt recovery”
Chkdsk will run next time you reboot.
it sounds like you really need to wipe the disk and reinstall. Dell has all the drivers on their web site. Enter the service tag and you can dl them. Burn them to cd and any important docs or pics you need to save. Double check everything is backed up before wiping the drive.
We literally buy hundreds of Dells at work every year. They don’t arrive with the drives full. Dell doesn’t load much extra stuff at all.
Spacemongerwill provide a graphic representation of all the data on your hard drive, and make it easier to locate what is taking up space. It comes with a 30 day free trial before you have to buy a key.
We had several compromised pc’s at work that had been turned into pirate movie and also porn file servers. Someone from outside used the virus to access the pc and setup the file server.
We caught it by monitoring our network bandwidth. Nearly all the drive was full of that stuff.
I’d suspect the virus the OP cleaned off must have dumped files onto the drive. Maybe to just eat up all the space? Or it was setting up a file server.
Found the needed space after searching for solutions on the Net. Seems that there was a TON of left over installation files from Windows SP2. Deleted them and freed up about a gig of space. Combined with deleting multiple restore points and the stupid thing now runs reasonably fast. Thanks for everyone’s help.
There are some things not worth saying and a computer with a 7GB HD is one of them. FWIW, that much space on an equivalent modern drive would cost about 70 cents. Scrap the computer, buy one made within the last 3 years for $200.
That drive has had so much munged up trash you’d be better of wiping clean and re-installing. How old is that computer that it has a 7 gig drive? That’s late 90’s early 2000 capacity levels. That’s beyond doorstop, that’s museum stuff.
Remember, not my computer my wife’s friend. I won’t try explaining technology to her, no point. She has a netbook and wants it to be as fast as when new. First thing I told her was to throw it away and buy a new one. But that didn’t fly to well.
I asume it’s an XP drive, then the Windows directory must be FULL of windows update files; the “backout” files for a decade of updates and the logs. You can delete these, since with a computer like that you’ll reformat before you ever back out of those updates.
I’ll second the comment about Windirstat. Free program, graphical display. It’s helped me find all kinds of crap; you’d be amazed how many duplicates and backups you make and forget about buried in obscure folder trees. Don’t forget to go into folder options and “show hidden files, show OS files, etc.” You should also be sure your browser cache is set to be as small as possible (Internet options - say about 20MB max) then delete browsing history. Empty recycle bin in mail.