Computer question.. cannot "free up" space! - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

86560SEL · #1 10-24-2008, 10:51 PM

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.

Larry Delor · #2 10-24-2008, 10:59 PM

Try www.ccleaner.com
I'd seen references to it before, here on mbshop, but didn't download the program until a few weeks ago. I was impressed by the amount of crap it cleaned up!

diametricalbenz · #3 10-24-2008, 11:23 PM

The hard disk path you're chasing is not the problem. What you have is something related to possibly a hardware issue, such as bad sectors or more likely a corrupted OS.

Run a diskcheck and see if reports any errors.

You'll want to dig for the restoration CD's in the meantime...

raymr · #4 10-25-2008, 01:01 AM

Run a Search for Files and Folders, and search for anything greater than 2000K in size. You may have some big nasty unknowns out there. Otherwise you might have a virus or hit a limit on the drive's error recovery capacity. Do you get any messages on boot up such as "Imminent disk failure..."?

KarTek · #5 10-25-2008, 07:20 AM

Did the virtual memory expand to fill some of the empty space when you erased the other files?

86560SEL · #6 10-28-2008, 12:09 AM

Thanks for the replies guys. Unfortunately, that computer finally "crashed" this morning. It was getting to where it would "freeze" up and I would have to turn it off... then it would take 5-10 tries to get it to power back up. This morning it finally gave up and I never got it back on. I could hear the blower working, but it would not power up. I tried it again when I got home and it finally acted like it wanted to come on, but the monitor was dimly illuminated and the blower was whirring faster than normal.

So.... I went out this evening and spent $1100 on a brand new computer.

When I left here I had planned on buying around a $600-$700 system, but of course the salesman at Best Buy talked me into this one.

So, my $700 planned purchase ended up being $905- then he wanted to sell me $300 more in "protective services", but I declined.

I got most of the data off of my old system, but there is still some stuff on there I want. I guess I will try to get it back on again and see if I can be successful one more time getting it on.

KarTek · #7 10-28-2008, 10:20 AM

You can stick the old HD on the new computer and it will read as another drive. It's not too hard to do.