Hard Drive Space Issues!!

[goehringoehring]

Most of the time, I am pretty good when it comes to computers, but this one had me stumped. I installed Windows XP on my friends computer and there is plenty of free HD space [16GB] but when i go to install Adobe Flash Player or the printer/scanner software [Lexmark 3300] it says that i need to free up some space. I was able to install some other programs just fine. For example, Microsoft Office 2003 Pro and AVG 8 Free edition. Any help would be appreciated.
Thank You!

[IamError]

Just to clarify the easy stuff first, i take it that there is only one partition, if there is another parition like a D drive or even if there is another hard drive just make sure that the install for those packages are indeed pointing to the operating system drive (likely to be the C:\ drive sometimes it isn't and a second partion (maybe one with only a small amount of space is using that drive letter and the default install on those packages is C:\Program Files\ making a program files folder on a drive with much less space)) .

 

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Also, Download and Install
CCleaner.
(Without Yahoo Toolbar: http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds/downloading-slim)

When it is installed, run it and make sure the following checkboxes are checked.
Internet Explorer --> Temporary Files
Internet Explorer --> Cookies (optional)
Mozilla Firefox --> Internet Cache
Mozilla Firefox --> Cookies (optional)
System --> Temporary Files
System --> Empty Recycling Bin (optional but recommended if low on disk space)
You can check whatever else you want but you should know that whatever you check will be unrecoverable.
When you are done, Run the Cleaner.

[Geek-9pm]

I installed Windows XP on my friends computer and there is plenty of free HD space

Which version of Windows XP? It is very possible that the installation was
not good. That can happen for no clear reason.
On this forum somebody made a comment that the Install of XP does not fully check the integrity of the HDD. If so, that might be a problem. But I don't think so, but I have been wrong once or twice.
A recent version of Adobe should no do that. It was older programs a few years ago that could not believe you have lots of drive space. That makes me think something is wrong. Either a bad download of Adobe, or a bad install of XP.
To be on the safe side, I would install XP again. And I would try a small partition, maybe 40GB or so.

[goehringoehring]

The more I think about it, the more I think that it may be a bad install. I appreciate all of the suggestions!!! The version is Windows XP Professional SP2. I am going to try a re installation and see what happens, I was just dreading sitting through another long and painful installation LOL.
I also noticed that it made the the HD drive F: all by its self for some reason but I never would have thought that that would cause issues like this. It was a completely clean install, formatted the HD with NTFS, and But i have been known to be wrong occasionally in the past. 
It is a one HD one partition system, the HD is 20 GB total with 16 GB free. Those installation packages don't give you the option to select where they are going to install, so wouldn't that mean that they are automatically going to point to the System Disk?
I am going to go try all of these ideas and see what happens[Re-Installing Windows being the last resort], but if there is anything else, please feel free to let me know, Ill post again when I am all done.

[Geek-9pm]

Do you have a Live Ubuntu CD?
It has good partition manager that can identify partitions and destroy them.
Here is a trick you can use with that program.
Delete all partitions on the target drive.
Create a Linux partition of 500MB.
Then create a larger partition, NTFS,  the uses more of the *censored*, maybe 12GB, but not the whole thing. There is a statistical probability (wow, didn't know I could even spell that!) lots of bad sectors are on the begin and end areas of the disc. This applies to older drives. New drives no not have this issue.
Now install Windows XP. It will not try to use the Linux partition. Ask it to do a full format on the large NTFS partition. Do not use unallocated space.
The is a 'kludge', but it can work. I has for me.

Later  try to use some of the unallocated space as a data only partition.

But why not just buy a good, used drive?
IDE 40GB drives are now cheaper that ever on dBay. 

[BC_Programmer]

I doubt it was a bad install.  XP generally uses up 1.5GB after installation, and you've got about 4 gb used.

Rather, the reason some programs refuse to install is simply because they were coded badly. This is because windows has two functions that programs can use to retrieve disk space, "GetDiskFreeSpace" and "GetDiskFreeSpaceEx". The first, and original version, will only return a value up to 2GB. larger values will return strange numbers, even negative. The Ex version fixes this issue by making the value larger.

The technique to circumvent this issue is to use a little or free a little drive space, so  that, hopefully, the old version of the function returns a value that the installer finds acceptable.

However- this still is strange... the adobe installer should be using the new version of the routine. Now that you've unvieled that the drive has multiple partitions, it could be that the drive you or it are selecting doesn't have enough space.