I have an older computer whose disk is full. I tried uninstalling some programs I never use and I get a message that the uninstall failed because there is not enough space on the disk. WTF? I have tried deleting some of the directories where these programs are stored (and then emptying the recycle bin) but it doesn’t seem to help. In fact, I deleted such a directory that claimed to hold 600 Mb, but the space on the hard drive didn’t change (less that 100 Mb). And the last time I deleted a bunch of files, the freed space quickly filled up again, although I added nothing. I think it was useless automatic updates being added. Any advice on this?
Try booting into safe mode and doing the uninstall from there.
It sounds as though you have a big malware problem to deal with first. Some malware programs replicate themselves several times, as you try to delete them. You might need to run an anti-virus and anti-malware program from an external drive, to make headway against them.
After you eliminate that, try using the built-in disk analyzer/defragmenter program in Windows. First, copy off any files you can, onto thumb drives or CD’s, so that you can delete as many as you can (photos, saved texts, Word files, etc) and clear EVERYTHING off your disk that you can, that way. Then run the analyze/defrag. Then see if you can use Add Remove to eliminate programs.
Just deleting the files and directories manually is not a good idea, as those programs will still be installed in the registry and it may be that you’re not seeing any more free space due to System Recovery saving the stuff you’re trying to wipe. You need to find non-program stuff to delete, like music/video files, which are typical data hogs you can safely and easily delete.
ETA: Try a program like WinDirStat, that scans your drive and visually displays all your files and their relative sizes. Makes it really easy to identify where and what to delete.
If i were you, I’d try to free up whatever space you can deleting (or copying off to a USB drive) music/video/pictures then actually using System Restore to rollback to a previous restore point. Then you can probably go into System Restore settings and decrease the percentage of your drive that it reserves for its use, which should be a significant boost to your free space.
Remember that when you are deleting files as voltaire suggested that you often don’t actually delete stuff but instead move it to the Recycle Bin.
You need to empty the Recycle Bin to get rid of the stuff.
Or you can delete files without involving the recycle bin:
Depending on it’s current size, you could temporarily turn off virtual memory, then reboot the PC which should delete the swap file and gain you back some space long enough to do some uninstalls.
Once you get some space back, you’d want to turn virtual memory back on.
You can also run a disc clean up if you have not already, and you can delete the update installer folders from the windows directory.
I have already deleted all the photo files (had no videos) and, as I said in the OP, I always empty the recycle bin after doing it. Yes, I should use uninstall to clean up the registry, but what do you do if uninstall doesn’t work. I suppose a virus is possible, but the drive is so full I cannot add any new program. Maybe booting into safe mode will help. I will try that.
If you have access to another computer, you can stick CCleaner onto a USB stick https://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/ccleaner-how-tos/running-ccleaner-from-a-usb-drive
and run it against the primary drive that’s full up.
That’ll free up some space - how much rather depends on your usage of the afflicted machine though.
You could also consider deleting old system restore points http://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-delete-all-system-restore-points-and-previous-versions-of-files-in-windows-7