My C drive is empty yet full. arg.

[ihatecomputers]

hello everybody 

i gather this is a pretty common complaint because i've seen it covered on the forum before but mine problem doesn't seem to want to go away after following those steps.

basically, we recently reset our family computer (like a big reset, F11, year zero, everything deleted) and now none of us (there are three partitions) have any files. However after trying to save a movie clip my computer informs me i'm out of disk space. i go to investigate and my C drive is saying it's 99% full. what the fack.

so i found my way here by searching the web and despite my ineptitude with computers i've done:
one of those ScanDisk things that takes about 2 hours
a disk cleanup
i've tried to defrag but the comp says i only have 1% free disk space and that's not enough for it to do a defrag
and i've cleaned out my temp files, cookies, history etc..

i'm totally open to any suggestions or trying anything listed above with better instructions because i am quite bad at computers and there may have been something i missed. HALP

[Allan]

No idea what you're talking about. You need to tell us EXACTLY what you did - every step that you took.

[ihatecomputers]

what don't you get?

[Allan]

basically, we recently reset our family computer (like a big reset, F11, year zero, everything deleted) and now none of us (there are three partitions) have any files. However after trying to save a movie clip my computer informs me i'm out of disk space. i go to investigate and my C drive is saying it's 99% full. what the fack.

I do not understand what you did, how you did it, or why you did it.

[ihatecomputers]

When the computer was starting up, I pressed F11. I don't know what that's called in technical terms. System restore? It takes the computer back to the day you got it? Deletes everything? Sorry I'm trying my best to explain with not much knowledge

[Allan]

Okay - I've never done that - I've always done clean installs and formats. So you used the built in restore process and got your system back to the way it was delivered (except for the other partitions) - is that correct? But it says your c: Drive is still full?

What does Windows Explorer show?
Download and run treesize (http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml)

[ihatecomputers]

That's the one. So I downloaded and opened treesize, I guess I hit scan C drive?

[Allan]

Yep

[ihatecomputers]

AHA. I think you may have solved my problem. There are like 100s and 100s of files from years ago that I can't access from my documents. So I guess I'll just be making my way through these for the next two weeks. Thanks a bunch 

[Allan]

You're welcome. Assuming it's XP you'll need to take ownership: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421