My computer has about 20 gigbytes of hard drive space. Recently I discovered I have about 2.5 gigs free. When searching for what was taking up so much space I discovered that Windows Millenium Edition (ME) takes up about 9 gigbytes. This seems like far too much. Does ME really take up so much and if so what can I do to reduce it without losing functionality? If windows is misreporting the free space, how can I fix that?
Assuming that you’ve already done the obvious housekeeping - i.e., cleaning out the Recycle Bin, temporary files, and IE/Netscape cache, you’ll next want to look at WinME’s new System Recovery utility, which regularly takes snapshots of your computer’s configuration and stores that information on disk in case you ever needed to reset your PC to an earlier state. IIRC, about 10% of total disk capacity is used by default, so 9GB out of 20 still sounds too much, but you may want to look into disabling this feature anyway. See Windows ME Annoyances by David Karp for more information.
Another thing, if you have Norton Utilities, Norton Protection will take up disk space to squirrel away stuff for un-deletion, so you may want to clean that out manually once in a while or also disable that feature.
What exactly makes you think Windows is taking up this space? Is it becasue the Windows directory is that large or something else? The OS should probably be under 1GB in my experience (depending on what you consider to part of the OS and what is not).
One thing to check on is your recycle bin size. In order to hold onto things you may decide later you really didn’t want to delete they recycler holds onto space to put it into or not, irregardles of if you ever get that many things deleted or not. To check if that is the case just right click on the recycle bin on the desktop and select properties. From there you can select what portion of your disk the recycler takes up. Be careful though with less space in the recycler you may lose things when you delete them because there is no space to store them. I usually keep mine at just a few percent. I make sure I know if I want to delte something or not before I do it.
Also check your browser settings. On IE go to Tools - Internet options. In the middle section there is a Temporary Internet Files - Settings button. Here you can slect how much space the browser will use on the disk.
Between the two of them they can take up a lot of space.
There may be other large files in the windows directory in particular WIN386.SWP. DO NOT DELETE THEM. The one mentioned is the swap file and you can do great damage by killing it. Several other files can get rather large though this will almost certainly be the largest.
I hope this helps. Let us know what the problem proves to be.
I have a fairly new install (about 4 months old) of Windows Me. I ran a quick check, and I have about 1.2 GB under the C:\Windows directory. If that’s how you determined Windows is taking up 9 GB, then you probably have temp files that can be cleared out.
Windows binaries should be around a gig to 2.5 gigs (my 98 windows directory and-sub directory files take up 2 gigs and it’s been years in the making) or so max even with ME. Last time we had a “Where did the space go?” snark hunt it was being eaten up by mp3’s and wav files the user had placed in his windows desktop directory. Do a file search on .mp3 .wav and graphic file formats and see how much space these are taking up and where they are located.
In some setups downloaded files are saved to the desktop by default and this is a windows sub-directory. If this was an upgrade from 98 sometimes the installer will copy the entire old PC drive to a sub-directory. If this was done and placed in the windows directory it could be problem.
The best thing to do is spend 30 minutes or in windows explorer walking the windows directory and checking directory sizes. I’ll bet you find the one where all those gigs are hiding.
Yeah, both those apply to me. How might I go about doing that?
Also, I found out how much space it took before by right clicking on the windows directory and hitting “Properties.”
A significant amount of the hard drive space, as someone speculated was in the desktop (thanks to mp3s.)
I have a 6 gig hard drive with Windows ME installed, and I around 2 gigs left. Thats of course whats left after all my games, mp3s, etc. 9 gigs doesnt sound right. I recommend going to http://www.jam-software.com and downloading a free little program called TreeSize. It will show you how many megs or gigs each folder is taking up. Hopefully then you can see where the problem lies.
Ditto. Brand new pc with Win ME. 1.3 gigs for my Windows directory. Sounds like you have some serious cache issues.
Qwerty:
Errghh…I’m traveling on business with a Win2K machine, so my WinME answers are based on memory and may not be 100% accurate. Anyway, here goes:
For Windows System Recovery, go to Control Panel, click on System, then click on the Performance tab. Now choose File System > Troubleshooting, and then disable System Restore.
For Norton, right-click on the Recycle Bin icon, click on the Norton Protection tab, then un-check the Enable Protection option. If you don’t want to turn the whole thing off, you can instead click on the Drive Usage button and decrease the amount of disk space Norton uses.
My own input: I’m on an 8-month-old WinME machine. The C:\Windows director reads as taking up 1.41 GB (1.76 on disk). Of that:
-143 in the Windows folder.
-180 MB in the Temporary Internet Files folder (this can be cleaned out)
-301 MB in the System folder.
-107 MB in the Application Data folder.
-311 MB in the Options folder.
… and an assortment of megabytes hidden away in the myriad of folders populating the directory (DrWatson? Why is there a folder named DrWatson?).
My guess is that someone probably put some programs into the Windows directory that shouldn’t be there (like they put everything into C:\Windows instead of C:\Program Files). Take a gander through the folders and see if there’s anything that shouldn’t be there.
Isn’t there a virus checker called Dr Watson??
Perhaps it came pre-installed?
Gp
Dr. Watson is a diagnostic tool that comes with Windows.
I appreciate the help Philistine. The problem is that there isn’t a “System” to click on in the control panel in Windows ME.
Use that FIND program, under the start menu, to find files larger than 5 megs on your computer. See what they are for.
Plus, if you ran scandisk & defrag regularily you would be able to see a picture of your HD better.
Hmm…the official word from Microsoft is that you can get to it via right-clicking the My Computer icon. And here’s another source on fine-tuning System Restore without turning it off completely.
As for not seeing System in Control Panel, my guess is that you’re the beneficiary of Microsoft’s “we know what’s best for you” policy, where the “less used” options are kept hidden. If you have your Control Panel window open, you should see, in small type, under the big fancy left-hand side graphic, an option to show all the icons/commands/whatever.
Now, to clean house (disclaimer: this is what I usually do, but don’t come bellyachin’ to me if you accidentally delete any files you really need):[ul][li]Right-click on Recycle Bin and purge everything in it.[/li][li]Open up Windows Explorer. Look for your temporary folder (should be either c:\windows emp or c: emp) and delete all files and sub-folders under it - but do NOT remove the temporary folder itself.[/li][li]While still in Windows Explorer, carefully go through each of the directories (or folders, if you prefer) and remove the files with .TMP extensions. Before you do this, you may need to let Windows display all file extensions, which is found under either View or Tools > Folder Options, and un-check “Hide file extensions…” under the View tab.[/li][li]Right-click the Internet Explorer icon and go to Properties. Under the General tab, click on the Delete temporary Internet files button. You can then click on the Settings button to reduce the amount of disk space IE uses for its cache. If you use Netscape, I think it’s under Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Cache.[/li]Look for extraneous fonts, graphics, sound files, and bookmarks that you don’t need. Best exercise caution here, though.[/ul]To expand a bit on what therealblaze said about Dr. Watson - it’s a standard part of Windows and its purpose is to log system/diagnostic information in the event of a crash.
Philistine, you’re a saint. Thanks so much for your help.
Oh yes, also I’d like to thank Bartman, JeffB, astro, Obvious Guy, wishbone, grimpixie, therealblaze and handy.