Vista - Vista taking up unusual amounts of space

I have a recent computer with a 160gig hard drive and vista home premium.
I am having the problem that my hard drive seems to be filling its self up.
each time I look back at it with no changed or disk back ups being run there
is less space. I seem to loose close to a gig a day.
I have emptied recycle bins, cleared out unused items, run defrags, run
Norton 360, run every reliable spyware and antivirus I can get my hands on,
run a program called black light to look for hidden running programs (I found
several and got rid of them but it didn't help my problem)
I down loaded a program called sequoia and a program called tree size up.
Both of which confirmed what the windows explorer was telling me. Windows
vista keeps growing. Its currently up to 82.4 gigs with 38,364 files and
6,688 folders last night when I checked it it was around 81 gigs.
I have no idea whats going on. I would really like to have my hard drive
back as its starting to get dangerously low.

none of those programs are able to tell you where on the disk it is growing.

restore points is one thing that can consume disk space.

this is another weird anomaly that some people have that others do not.



mikeyhsd@comcast.net



"PaulDaJedi" <PaulDaJedi@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:F6BC70F1-7A11-46EB-8EB4-F2E94BF1F988@microsoft.com...
I have a recent computer with a 160gig hard drive and vista home premium.
I am having the problem that my hard drive seems to be filling its self up.
each time I look back at it with no changed or disk back ups being run there
is less space. I seem to loose close to a gig a day.
I have emptied recycle bins, cleared out unused items, run defrags, run
Norton 360, run every reliable spyware and antivirus I can get my hands on,
run a program called black light to look for hidden running programs (I found
several and got rid of them but it didn't help my problem)
I down loaded a program called sequoia and a program called tree size up.
Both of which confirmed what the windows explorer was telling me. Windows
vista keeps growing. Its currently up to 82.4 gigs with 38,364 files and
6,688 folders last night when I checked it it was around 81 gigs.
I have no idea whats going on. I would really like to have my hard drive
back as its starting to get dangerously low.

PaulDaJedi,

You can get a utility program that can help clean up your hard drive, such
CCleaner, if you don't already have such a program. You can take a look at
CCleaner, a free utility, here:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

You can download and install it and just go with the default settings.
People speak highly of this utility, and I use it myself.

Another step you can take to clean up and to provide more hard drive space
is to remove all but the most recent restore points. You can do this by
double clicking on Computer and selecting the C drive Properties. Then click
on the Disk Cleanup button. In the window that opens, select the More
Options tab. You now will notice the option to remove all but the most
recent restore points. Do it.

After that, you can defrag the hard drive. Notice how much disk space you
have before and after all these above operations.
--
freddy


"PaulDaJedi" wrote:

> I have a recent computer with a 160gig hard drive and vista home premium.
> I am having the problem that my hard drive seems to be filling its self up.
> each time I look back at it with no changed or disk back ups being run there
> is less space. I seem to loose close to a gig a day.
> I have emptied recycle bins, cleared out unused items, run defrags, run
> Norton 360, run every reliable spyware and antivirus I can get my hands on,
> run a program called black light to look for hidden running programs (I found
> several and got rid of them but it didn't help my problem)
> I down loaded a program called sequoia and a program called tree size up.
> Both of which confirmed what the windows explorer was telling me. Windows
> vista keeps growing. Its currently up to 82.4 gigs with 38,364 files and
> 6,688 folders last night when I checked it it was around 81 gigs.
> I have no idea whats going on. I would really like to have my hard drive
> back as its starting to get dangerously low.

What I meant is that I keep using them to see that windows is getting bigger.
also it will grow in size when no back up has taken place. though I have
noticed that after running black light windows has stopped growing larger?
maybe there was something in there. is there any way to clear it back out or
do I have to reinstall vista? Is over 80 gigs an unusual size for vista?

"mikeyhsd" wrote:

> none of those programs are able to tell you where on the disk it is growing.
>
> restore points is one thing that can consume disk space.
>
> this is another weird anomaly that some people have that others do not.
>
>
>
> mikeyhsd@comcast.net
>
>
>
> "PaulDaJedi" <PaulDaJedi@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:F6BC70F1-7A11-46EB-8EB4-F2E94BF1F988@microsoft.com...
> I have a recent computer with a 160gig hard drive and vista home premium.
> I am having the problem that my hard drive seems to be filling its self up.
> each time I look back at it with no changed or disk back ups being run there
> is less space. I seem to loose close to a gig a day.
> I have emptied recycle bins, cleared out unused items, run defrags, run
> Norton 360, run every reliable spyware and antivirus I can get my hands on,
> run a program called black light to look for hidden running programs (I found
> several and got rid of them but it didn't help my problem)
> I down loaded a program called sequoia and a program called tree size up.
> Both of which confirmed what the windows explorer was telling me. Windows
> vista keeps growing. Its currently up to 82.4 gigs with 38,364 files and
> 6,688 folders last night when I checked it it was around 81 gigs.
> I have no idea whats going on. I would really like to have my hard drive
> back as its starting to get dangerously low

I have a similar issue on my desktop, my situation is that after running
defrag,my hard drive grown up, it's really puzzled me. I even turned off
system restore.

"freddy" wrote:

> PaulDaJedi,
>
> You can get a utility program that can help clean up your hard drive, such
> CCleaner, if you don't already have such a program. You can take a look at
> CCleaner, a free utility, here:
>
> http://www.ccleaner.com/
>
> You can download and install it and just go with the default settings.
> People speak highly of this utility, and I use it myself.
>
> Another step you can take to clean up and to provide more hard drive space
> is to remove all but the most recent restore points. You can do this by
> double clicking on Computer and selecting the C drive Properties. Then click
> on the Disk Cleanup button. In the window that opens, select the More
> Options tab. You now will notice the option to remove all but the most
> recent restore points. Do it.
>
> After that, you can defrag the hard drive. Notice how much disk space you
> have before and after all these above operations.
> --
> freddy
>
>
> "PaulDaJedi" wrote:
>
> > I have a recent computer with a 160gig hard drive and vista home premium.
> > I am having the problem that my hard drive seems to be filling its self up.
> > each time I look back at it with no changed or disk back ups being run there
> > is less space. I seem to loose close to a gig a day.
> > I have emptied recycle bins, cleared out unused items, run defrags, run
> > Norton 360, run every reliable spyware and antivirus I can get my hands on,
> > run a program called black light to look for hidden running programs (I found
> > several and got rid of them but it didn't help my problem)
> > I down loaded a program called sequoia and a program called tree size up.
> > Both of which confirmed what the windows explorer was telling me. Windows
> > vista keeps growing. Its currently up to 82.4 gigs with 38,364 files and
> > 6,688 folders last night when I checked it it was around 81 gigs.
> > I have no idea whats going on. I would really like to have my hard drive
> > back as its starting to get dangerously low.

I just DL and ran that CCleaner and it found 50 megs or so to delete but that
was about it. as for clearing previous restore points it didn't seem to make
much of a difference at all. Should I just be reinstalling vista at this
point?

one of my friend told me that the index may caused this problem, because
after cleaning disk, the live search may reindex on your system and refresh
index files on the computer, therefore he suggest I should restore index to
its original states to have a test, i'll try this method when i back to home.
I just share my information for you, which may also give you some hints.




"PaulDaJedi" wrote:

> I just DL and ran that CCleaner and it found 50 megs or so to delete but that
> was about it. as for clearing previous restore points it didn't seem to make
> much of a difference at all. Should I just be reinstalling vista at this
> point?

All,

It's likely that the condition you are experiencing is nothing to be
concerned about. Vista conducts activities (like indexing, building restore
points, etc.) that utilize disk space and cause disk activity. This is
likely normal. Even so, if you care to research this further, you can use
google to search the Internet for additional information about this
condition. Good search terms produce good results. You can start by
searching on:

disk activity vista

or

heavy disk activity vista

You get the idea.
--
freddy


"PaulDaJedi" wrote:

> I just DL and ran that CCleaner and it found 50 megs or so to delete but that
> was about it. as for clearing previous restore points it didn't seem to make
> much of a difference at all. Should I just be reinstalling vista at this
> point?

CCleaner is ok to run, but would suggest not allowing it to do AUTOMATIC cleanup.
review its suggestions and act on them yourself.



mikeyhsd@comcast.net



"freddy" <fkirschen@tidalwave.net> wrote in message news:06A47964-F918-4123-96D8-7701A01F370B@microsoft.com...
PaulDaJedi,

You can get a utility program that can help clean up your hard drive, such
CCleaner, if you don't already have such a program. You can take a look at
CCleaner, a free utility, here:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

You can download and install it and just go with the default settings.
People speak highly of this utility, and I use it myself.

Another step you can take to clean up and to provide more hard drive space
is to remove all but the most recent restore points. You can do this by
double clicking on Computer and selecting the C drive Properties. Then click
on the Disk Cleanup button. In the window that opens, select the More
Options tab. You now will notice the option to remove all but the most
recent restore points. Do it.

After that, you can defrag the hard drive. Notice how much disk space you
have before and after all these above operations.
--
freddy


"PaulDaJedi" wrote:

> I have a recent computer with a 160gig hard drive and vista home premium.
> I am having the problem that my hard drive seems to be filling its self up.
> each time I look back at it with no changed or disk back ups being run there
> is less space. I seem to loose close to a gig a day.
> I have emptied recycle bins, cleared out unused items, run defrags, run
> Norton 360, run every reliable spyware and antivirus I can get my hands on,
> run a program called black light to look for hidden running programs (I found
> several and got rid of them but it didn't help my problem)
> I down loaded a program called sequoia and a program called tree size up.
> Both of which confirmed what the windows explorer was telling me. Windows
> vista keeps growing. Its currently up to 82.4 gigs with 38,364 files and
> 6,688 folders last night when I checked it it was around 81 gigs.
> I have no idea whats going on. I would really like to have my hard drive
> back as its starting to get dangerously low.

I would not reinstall at this point.
not likely to improve situation.

if you are certain of not losing any personal data.
and need something to do for several hours guess it would not hurt.



mikeyhsd@comcast.net



"PaulDaJedi" <PaulDaJedi@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:EF7AE37C-C299-4E2B-84D0-8A2ECDC00817@microsoft.com...
I just DL and ran that CCleaner and it found 50 megs or so to delete but that
was about it. as for clearing previous restore points it didn't seem to make
much of a difference at all. Should I just be reinstalling vista at this
point?