Really odd c drive space issue

[thequietone]

I've had this problem for a while, and searched into various possible causes as well, but am not very computer savvy so am still 

My computer has two drives, d and c, 43gb and 30gb each. I use windows 2003.

The c drive was set up with lots of program files originally, but as it complained about space I moved them over to the d drive, no matter how big a program I removed from the c drive, within a couple of weeks it would be down to about 200-400mb free space. Now all my programs are on the d drive, which has like 39gb free of the 43 while the c drive is filled up to a massive 98%.

89% of this is on the windows folder and within this tune disk space explorer says system32 folder has 54% of the 23.90gb, and service pack files folder has 18%. However, exploring further using the program, the system32 folder says its only 1.39gb and the service pack files folder only 464.84mb, and oddity to anyone with basic math skills.

90% of the windows folder is said to be taken up by 'other' file types, the other file types ranging from 7 to less than 1 percent, but the total size of 'other' folders is said to be about 1.5gb.

I've checked out temporary files of which I have very few on my c drive, the temporary folders are empty, so I have zilch idea of what on earth is taking up all that space and so do all the hard drive space mapping software I've used. Does anyone have any idea?

[Aegis]

I wonder if they are system restore points which are being saved in case you need to execute a system restore.  They contain large amounts of information, and can take up a lot of space.

If that is what these "other" files are, perhaps some of them can be deleted.

[Quantos]

Try this, it will help IF it is System Restore.

[thequietone]

You may be onto something there, tried deleting system restore points as stated in instructions, I get the 'are you sure you want to delete all but the most recent restore points?' Click yes, ok, then nada, nothing else comes up.

Edit - just restarted computer and tried again, think it worked this time

Edit2 - results - still less than 200mb free space of 30gb, no change I can see.

[Quantos]

It's probably the VSS(Volume Shadow Copy), what service pack are you running?

<edit>  Here is some information and a hotfix on VSS from Microsoft.  </edit>

[thequietone]

Just looked at my system information, and its service pack three. Also says to my surprise that it runs on the 2002 version microsoft windows XP system, which surprises me as I was told quite confidently by a computer tech that it worked on the windows server 2003 version, so I got that bit wrong.

[Quantos]

So you have XP SP3, not Server 2003?

[umbildee]

I simply suggest CCleaner for that kind of issues.
it will perform different deep clean up on your system.

try it and you'll love it. ccleaner.com

good luck

[Quantos]

Here is an excellent how-to on controlling VSS.

Don't run CCleaner.  Utilities like that quite often cause more damage than they claim to fix.

[BC_Programmer]

CCleaner is recommended often here....

If your wary, just stay away from the registry cleaner.

[michaewlewis]

Just looked at my system information, and its service pack three. Also says to my surprise that it runs on the 2002 version microsoft windows XP system, which surprises me as I was told quite confidently by a computer tech that it worked on the windows server 2003 version, so I got that bit wrong.

you might want to check your receipt to see what you got charged for. If the tech charged $700 for server 2003 and put windows xp on their, then he owes you $500 or a server license.

[Aegis]

just stay away from the registry cleaner

Are there problems with the registry cleaner portion of CCleaner?

[BC_Programmer]

nope; notice the "If your wary" qualifier before that.

It's probably one of the safer registry cleaning tools, since it stays in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, instead of trying to determine the meaning of keys made by other software. (for example; there is no reason for registered classes to have a DLL that doesn't exist)

[Quantos]

nope; notice the "If your wary" qualifier before that.

It's probably one of the safer registry cleaning tools, since it stays in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, instead of trying to determine the meaning of keys made by other software. (for example; there is no reason for registered classes to have a DLL that doesn't exist)

So it's safer than that 'System Mechanic'?

[BC_Programmer]

So it's safer than that 'System Mechanic'?

Yes. Basically, all it does is remove the COM registration info for classes whose DLL or executable don't exist; it does a few other things, but it doesn't try to guess what other software keys mean. For example, a lot of registry cleaners will see a filename specification and, if that file doesn't exist, claim it's an error. The problem being that the file could be on a network share or something and simply unaccessible at the time- or more likely the entry isn't a filename at all, or maybe it's a file that the program will create. Even the best heuristics result in pure guesswork, in this case.