[arrowood]

Our 8.5 GB hard drive has only 760 MB left. I uninstalled (through control panel) all of the programs we no longer use. I ran disk clean-up and emptied the Outlook folders. I also moved all of our documents, pictures, music files, etc. to an external drive. I recovered less than 100 MB. What is taking up my memory? How do I get rid of it? Can I reformat the hard drive and start over?

The lack of memory is causing some running problems (out of memory errors), especially when we try to print.

Thank you!

Windows 98 SE
128 MB RAM

Jeff

[Advertisements]

I would run scandisk first. There are viruses that cause damage to your boot sector causing it to read as though you are using much more of your disk space. Just go start>Run, type in scandisk, then hit OK.

[Tyger]

I would run scandisk first. There are viruses that cause damage to your boot sector causing it to read as though you are using much more of your disk space. Just go start>Run, type in scandisk, then hit OK.

[makai]

Right click on C:\windows\Temporary Internet Files folder, choose properties, and see how large it is. Do the same for C:\windows\temp.

makai

[Tyger]

You might want to have a look at this post, the last entry might apply to your case. Your virtual memery may be using up all your space.

http://www.geekstogo...isk-t43364.html

[dagger]

Did you run a defrag after deleting all the stuff? Its important to when you add or delete a large number of files or big files to prevent the HD from getting fragmented.

[arrowood]

I am running defrag now, then I'll run scandisk. I take better care of my laptop on which I do all of my work, but I haven't run defrag or scan disk on my desktop for a very long time. I'll run spybot too. Then I'll check the virtual memory and the temp files.

Thanks for the recommendations so far. Keep them coming! Is there anyplace else to look for fat besides the temp folders?

Edited by arrowood, 13 July 2005 - 11:13 PM.

[arrowood]

I ran defrag and gaidne about 35MB. However, when I ran scandisk, it kept restarting (because a program wrote to the C-drive). I closed down all programs and exited all of the programs in the taskbar that I could, but scandisk still kept restarting. Any suggestions?

[bdlt]

here's something to try while you are waiting for a reply regarding scandisk.

has the recycle bin been emptied lately? if not, empty it and see if you have any more free space.

[dagger]

Why dont you try it in safe mode?

[Tyger]

I ran defrag and gaidne about 35MB.  However, when I ran scandisk, it kept restarting (because a program wrote to the C-drive).  I closed down all programs and exited all of the programs in the taskbar that I could, but scandisk still kept restarting.  Any suggestions?

If you're using a screensaver, change to none.

[arrowood]

I ran scandisk in safe mode - and after a few tries I got it to complete a thorough scan. It found a bunch of folders that had file names too long for MS-DOS. The default fix was to move them, so I chose that for most of the files. Then I ran Spybot and got rid of some spyware. Finally, I ran McCaffy Uninstall and got rid of a few defunct programs and then cleaned out the trash, temp folders, etc. I had run defrag before, but I'll run it again. I am up to 893MB free on the hard drive. That should get rid of the "out of memory" errors, but I am still wondering what is eating up all of the memory. When I uninstalled those programs and their related files, they only freed up 100-200 MB of memory. I'll keep checking for programs we don't use and use Uninstaller to get rid of them, since Uninstaller gets rid of all related files, including dlls.

Thanks for all your help. Is there a next step?

[arrowood]

You might want to have a look at this  post, the last entry might apply to your case. Your virtual memery may be using up all your space.

http://www.geekstogo...isk-t43364.html

The suggestion was to check virtual memory. I looked at my settings and the minimum was set at 500 with a maximum of 1000. Is that an optimal setting? I changed the maximum (per the post's suggestion) to the max allowed, but kept the minimum at 500.

[Tyger]

The suggestion was to check virtual memory.  I looked at my settings and the minimum was set at 500 with a maximum of 1000.  Is that an optimal setting?  I changed the maximum (per the post's suggestion) to the max allowed, but kept the minimum at 500.

If it's set at those values it can't be using less or more than .5gb or 1.0 gb of your disk space. Have you checked with Microsoft Updates to see if there are any fixes related tp memory usage? I seem to recall at least one.