For the past year I’ve been having problems with all of my free hard drive space disappearing, so I deleted many files and programs I had from my computer. Soon after deleting them, however, the available space would soon go right back down again. I constantly cleared out all my temp files and internet cache, but this did nothing to stop the inevitable progression.
Thinking that “System Restore” was set too high, I moved it down to the lowest setting…this did not fix the problem. So, yesterday I decided to do two things at once…I completely disabled “System Restore” and I also deleted “Comet Cursor” using the Add/Remove option. To my surprise, when I restarted my computer, my hard drive space had increased from 274 MB to 4.13 GB!!! I’m glad I didn’t buy a new hard drive! My HD capacity is only 7.85 GB, but I’m wondering where all this extra space came from–it’s over half my drive!
My Question is…just what is going on? System Restore, even on its highest setting, is only supposed to take about a tenth of the hard drive capacity, and had it set at 200 MB before. Could “Comet Cursor” have been responsible? I thought I’d checked the comet folder before, and it didn’t appear that big. But perhaps it has something to do with another problem I have?–my computer always shuts down improperly.
Relevant info: Gateway Pentium II 450 Mhz, upgraded to WindowsMe and 192 MB RAM; I also installed an external parallel port Zip drive, and later a CD/RW drive and ethernet card.
Problems getting my computer to boot up began just after I installed the CD/RW…I tried several remedies but after finally removing the Zip drive (I still kept software installed, though) it now loads up easily…Unfortunately, now it never shuts down correctly, so I get that “improper shutdown detected…scanning disk for errors” every time I boot up. After calling several computer experts who didn’t help, I decided I could live with this annoyance By the way, I turned “System Restore” back on at the 200 mb level, and haven’t noticed any decrease in HD space since.
I know that “Comet Cursor” downloads new cursors to you, but I have a hard time swallowing a couple of gig worth.
One thing you might check is where your CD-RW writes temp files to. If you have a failed or canceled burn some programs either don’t delete them, or don’t delete until you reboot.
You must be running ME. ME’s system restore feature is buggy and will constantly replicate the restore files. Not just a most recent copy of the nessisary files, but an archive of resoration files. I have a 20 GIG HD on my system running ME and found myself with 300 megs of space after only three months because of this bug.
Microsoft has virtually no help for this on their knowledgebase and for some reason I was unable to disable System Restore when I eventually figured it out. I ended up selecting to display hidden files and folders and repeating this in the _RESTORE properties menu and manually deleting all the files contained in that folder.
Restore uses 12% of your HD space until you give it another setting.
When I see topics like this I always answer them the same, get a system maintenace
program like System Suite 2000 or Nortons & run it every now & then to clean things up.
The registry needs cleaning & defragging as does the HD. First time I ran 2000
it found 500 registry links to clean. (W98)
Restore uses 12% of your HD space until you give it another setting.
When I see topics like this I always answer them the same, get a system maintenace
program like System Suite 2000 or Nortons & run it every now & then to clean things up.
The registry needs cleaning & defragging as does the HD. First time I ran 2000
it found 500 registry links to clean. (W98)
When functioning properly restore will default to use up to 12% of your hard drive. However, often times restore does not function properly and will take up as much space as it is possible (ie: your entire drive) by looping copies instead of replacing copies.
Go to Yahoo and do a search for _RESTPORE+problems and you will get two main results, the first is a series of virus problems (this is a popular location for viruses because it’s next to impossible for my virus protection programs to isolate files located in _RESTORE) and secondly are posts from persons who end up with 10+ gigs of _RESTORE files, much more than 12% of their available space.
If you look at Mace Man’s post he had about 50% of his drive tied up in _RESTORE files. So while your advice for people to install utilities like Norton, Suite 2K, etc is a good idea if you have the resources (might not be the best option if someone is running an older box with an older processor) those options may not work if you are dealing with a flawed O/S.
Cleaning the registry for example is not likely to clear up 4+ gigs of drive space. It is certainly likely to speed up your system, but this topic is in regard to drive space.
Bottom line is that ME sucks dirty dingus. Unless you absolute NEED to run ME switch to some other O/S. Hell, ME isn’t really a full system, it’s an “upgrade” to 98 that isn’t as good as 98 with all it’s regular upgrades. The only reason I stick with it is the box I use it on is sheeer laziness and that I refuse to shell out for another O/S.
zen, when I ran System Suite today it made a real pretty picture of where large files are
& how much space they are using. At least I know where they are.
Thats really great, but my point was and is that your assesment of the amount of space _RESTORE will suck up is innacurate in that it assumes the program is running properly which it often does not and that even when you know where files are located _RESTORE prevents you from deleting them unless you manually alter the foldre’s parameters.
You stated that whenever you hear “generic” you make “generic” suggestion. Well “generic” suggestion would be of little help other than pointing out the location of said file bulk in this instance and could lead one to overlook ways to actually solve the issue. System Suite, like Norton AV or Symantec’s AV programs will not touch files located in _RESTORE. Those files are protected from quarantine and deletion unless manually altered.
I didn’t follow their directions, I actually just upgraded to win 98. I had so many problems with ME on that machine that I decided that it wasn’t worth it to continue tryting to get it to work.
By the way, I turned “System Restore” back on at the 200 mb level, and haven’t noticed any decrease in HD space since.