My computer only had about 25% memory left. I went out and bought an external hard drive and transferred ALL of my photos (I had about 10000!) into it and deleted most of my photos from the computer and ran a disc cleanup and deleted them from the recycle bin. I also had a computer game on there from 2005 that I never played (and it took up a huge amount of memory) and I deleted that as well. I deleted tons of emails, etc. I ran a disc cleanup again, emptied the recycle bin and I still have not freed up anymore memory than before! Is there something I am missing?

My computer shows:
USED SPACE - 20.2 GB
FREE SPACE - 12.7 GB

and the pie chart shows it about 75% used up. I only have very few photos on there and hardly any programs on here now. The reason I started taking action is that I thought my computer was crashing. When I would first turn it on, it would take a couple of tries to get the hard drive to turn on (I am now leaving it on all of the time until it finally gives up).. then it got where the computer was sluggish. The freeing of space has definitely sped things up, but I am still puzzled why I am not freeing up my memory, despite deleting literally over 10,000 photos, emails and a computer game on the system. I am wondering if there is something I am missing.

BTW - its a Compaq Presario. I have had it for about 4-5 years and it has always performed suprisingly well.... at least for my needs. Next on my list is a new HP system.

Thanks for any advice.