Empty space is filled with unknown data.

[ultimatum]

I have one primary hard drive which I split into two partitions, I left the windows partition with 16 GB of space and the other one with 95 GB of space. Here is what I have and what takes up space on my windows (C:) drive:

Documents and Settings: 2.33 GB
i386: 526 MB
Program Files: 6.81 GB
Windows: 3.11 GB
Total (roughly): 12 GB

I install all huge applications on my 95 GB drive to save space on this one, but for some reason I have only 415 MB of space left empty. What happened to those other 4 GBs?

While at it, when I enable to show hidden files/folders and go to Documents and Settings/User/Local Settings/Temp there is a bunch of unneeded files which I can delete but lots of them are in use and won't be deleted, yet they still take up space, how do I go on deleting those files? Thanks in advance.

[unlovedwarrior]

try Ccleaner

[ultimatum]

try Ccleaner

Tried. It cleaned some of the files and left 1.40 GB of space which is impressive, although there is still another half of that missing.

[unlovedwarrior]

ok then

dl avg anti-spyware
superantispyware
spybot search and destroy
adaware se personel
Ccleaner

update them
reboot in safe mode
rapidly press f8 before windows loads

first run ccleaner then the other ones report back on how the computer is

also run your anti-virus if u have one if not get avg free

what OS and anti-virus do you have?
 

[patio]

Windows also needs some space for system restore although yyou can change the settings on how much space is set aside for it.
It also needs space for the swapfile as well. This can be checked in Control Panel/System/Advanced/Perfprmance Options.Virtual memory...

[ultimatum]

ok then

dl avg anti-spyware
superantispyware
spybot search and destroy
adaware se personel
Ccleaner

update them
reboot in safe mode
rapidly press f8 before windows loads

first run ccleaner then the other ones report back on how the computer is

also run your anti-virus if u have one if not get avg free

what OS and anti-virus do you have?
 

I have NOD32 it works really well, I'll give it a scan tonight. I have XP Professional SP2.

[Zylstra]

Like Patio said, most of it is related to space taken from System Restore and the SWAP (Virtual Memory) file.

These can be disabled, but in some cases, disabling has great loss.
(eg: Ability to roll back, or have extra memory when needed)

If you are 100% sure that its not one of these, I reccomend that you run Scandisk, as it will check the free space amounts.

Information about Scandisk and how to run it on Windows XP is on the right hand side of this page:
http://www.computerhope.com/software/scandisk.htm#06