[pheadlee]

I bought my Sony Vaio laptop from Costco. It did not come with a recovery cd or any operating system cds. It has Windows Vista installed. I am living in DR Congo...with no available computer stores around.

My hard drive space just keeps disappearing. I removed all my photos, music and documents and any unused programs. The hard drive is 130 GB, yet I have only 1 to 2 GB free. I run disk cleanup and keep removing things and it may show 6 GB left and later the same day it shows only 2 left. What is happening?

I think I have decided to reformat the machine. I do have a copy of Windows 7. Can I do a reformat/install option of Windows 7 with only 1 GB left? Will it reformat the computer first and then install Windows 7 thus erasing everything from the computer first? Where can I find the best option for reformatting instructions? Since I have no original disks, which drivers should I try to download first?

Thank you for any help you may give....
PHeadlee

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Before you reformat the machine lets look at a couple of things first. Download a free utility called Treesize http://www.jam-softw.../treesize_free/ there is the link and see where the majority of your space is being used, that may help figure out what is eating all of that space.

[fluffybunny88]

Before you reformat the machine lets look at a couple of things first. Download a free utility called Treesize http://www.jam-softw.../treesize_free/ there is the link and see where the majority of your space is being used, that may help figure out what is eating all of that space.

[pheadlee]

Thank you for the help. I did as instructed but I am puzzled. Why does TreeSize say I have only 50.8 GB (half of this is used by Windows) when windows explorer says I have 142 GB. That is obviously the problem. What do you think?

[fluffybunny88]

That is a very strange one and to be honest I dont have a good reason as to why that is. Do you have an antivirus on the computer? Might want to go through the steps in the malware forums http://www.geekstogo...cleaning-guide/ to just see if maybe you have a bug of some kind. Lets rule that out and go from there.

[hfcg]

This is an issue with shadow copy (system restore)
Open a command prompt with administrator privileges:
1.Click Start - All Programs - Accessories. Right click on ‘Command Prompt’ and click ‘Run as Administrator’.
2.Type the following in the command prompt:vssadmin list shadowstorage The results shown will be similar to this:
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 2.702 GB
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 2.933 GB
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 5 GB

3.If you feel like Vista is taking up too much space, then use this command to lower it:vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=[Drive Letter]: /For=[Drive Letter]: /Maxsize=[space]For example, I executed this command to lower it to 2GB:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=2GB

[pheadlee]

After following your instructions I just rebooted and gained over 80 GB! I cannot thank you enough! I experimented first using the storage space to be 15 GB. Now I am going to lower it to 2 GB. Thank you for saving me hours of headache. I can now load my photos and music and documents back onto my computer from a hard drive. Bless you for your kindness and help!!!!