how to find files with no drive reference.

[jestor00]

I have a dell laptop with windows media center installed, as you know they come with a seperate partition for the backup files. For me backup files are not necessary, so I deleted the contents then installed WOW in its spot. Then later on I decided to merge this partition using partition magic. While merging my computer crashed. My C: drive is saying that it has the contents of the old partition, but it is not accessible or visible. I tried using partition magics drive mapper to make these files go into c: but it did nothing.

I just want to free up this 10 gigs of space, should never have put wow on my computer in the first place, but for 2.99 i figured I'd check it out.

I've tried searching with windows. The files are still there b/c the drive space is still being used up, its like they never got marked to be overwritten. I've clicked on everyfolder on my computer including hidden one's and added up the total it falls about ten gigs short of what windows says is in C:\. that 10 gigs is what would have been in the other partition.

So long story short: How do i find these files so i can delete them?

Thanks for your help.

 

[edklite]

I have a c2d from dell and I don't have 2 partitions. as a matter of fact I thought dell did not do partitions.

anyways, I guess you got one.

so I'm not sure what is going on there boss but here are some simple things to try.

delete your restore files.

clean all your temp files. do you have ccleaner?

try defrag.

 

[pscowboy]

You have an oem recovery cd which will need those files in case your comp gets into trouble. Those recovery discs are not full versions. How will you you help yourself out of a bad spot?

 

[jestor00]

If things go completely bad I just reformat. I don't have any important files on my laptop, that is what my desktop is for. Nothing is wrong at this point in time except that there are 10 gigs on the hd that have nothing pointing to them and i can't mark them to be overwritten since i can't find them.

The reason Dell sends their stuff with 2 partitions now is b/c it comes with a free trial of Norton ghost and that needs a separate partition to function. I had to pay 10 bucks for a hard copy of the os. Im sure on that copy it also has all of dell's crap, like the free trials to a bunch of software i don't want. I wish i could find a copy of wmc so i could just reformat and put it on w/o any of dells crap. Now some stuff is good for most people like throttling back the processor when operating on battery, but for me it is just a nuisance especially since it can't be turned off.

I need a program or a way that will allow me to search for files that used to have i can't remember what the partition was but it was either d:\ or f:\ as their root.

Defragging may do something but at the moment the hd is too full to defrag. But i doubt this will help anyways since it just puts files in order.

Also deleting the temp files and restore files won't do anything since those are not what is taking up space, it is world of warcraft that was installed on the old partition then when the partition was merged it never got remarked to c instead of d or f that it was initially.

 

[pscowboy]

Okay. Do the following:

Empty out Start - Run - %temp%
Empty out C:\Windows\Prefetch
Empty out C:\Windows\Temp

Right-click the "C" drive - Properties - Tools - Error Checking; check both boxes and reboot.

The Chkdsk utility will run. This may very well solve the problem.

Post back about that elusive partition after that.

 

[jestor00]

still not showing. redid the math and details of C: shows total size 49.6 gigs with 6.02 gigs free. When opening c: and adding up all files in it including hidden it equals 38.51 gigs including the free space, or 32.49 gigs used up.
windows is on a separate invisible partition taking up 4.940 gigs of space the harddrive has a capacity of 55.788gigs there is also another invisible partition with 47 MB im assuming that is the boot record or whatever it is called. The partition style is master boot record. I got this information by looking at the hard drives properties.

 

[pscowboy]

How about doing a "full" backup of just the "C" drive with a good purchased app like PCBackup? I would uninstall WOW first. If it barks at you, try Safe Mode. Better yet, how about a clean install on a fully restored hard drive to capacity?

You use a debug routine to wipe ALL partitions from the drive to claim all of it again. You put debug.exe in place of drivespace on a W98 boot diskette. The routine is simple - takes about one minute to do.

Then do a clean install of the O/S.

 

[jestor00]

Yes I can always reformat, I normally use fdisk to wipe the drive before reinstalling the os, I was just hoping to find a way to fix the problem w/o reformatting. I would uninstall wow, but it is not visible no icons no programs in program files, nothing. Maybe when im at work today ill just suck it up and reformat.