Local Drive C full but shouldn't be

[Quanza]

I'm trying to assist someone with this issue on their computer. She stated that her entire C drive went from manageable to full overnight. She could not tell me specific size before it went to full. The drive today shows 4.21 MB of 9.84 GB. Prior she deleted some things from the drive but it still continues to grow. As a matter of fact, a few moments ago the drive showed closer to 9 MB instead of the 4.21MB it's showing now.

Here's info on what she has:
Dell Inspiron 1525
Windows Vista Home Basic
Intel R Pentuim R Dual CPU T2390 @ 1.86 GHz
1.00 GB Installed Memory
32-bit OS
SP1 Build 6001
Total Physical Memory 0.99 GB
Available Physical Memory 282 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.24 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.30 GB


Her OS D drive is 55.3 GB free of 99.2 GB and doesn't seem to be getting any larger, though i just got the laptop from her last night.

I've selected to show hidden files and did not see any large files anywhere. This is ALL that I see:
Program file: 358 MB
ProgramData: 434 MB
Users: 72.8MB
Windows: Larger than 639MB

Defragmenter was initiated and froze at about 13%.
Disk Clean-up is showing only 30.9KB of available space to be had.
Also ran Dell Diagnostics and everything passed.
System Restore says no restore points have been created and prompts me to create a point, however when i attempt to do so, its says there's not enough room on the C drive and I was not sure if I should create it on the OS D drive or not.??


So that's about all I know to try off top. I can follow directions well if anyone can offer suggestions and steps to achieve them. If you require more info. and specs. please let me know and I'll send them right away.

Thanks in advance for any help offered!!

PS-By the end of typing this post she only has 3.92 MB remaining...

-Quanza

 

[JDFan]

From your description it sounds like the problem is that you have a very small partition for the C:\ drive (what size HDD does it have ?) -- Her system only has 1 GB of system RAM which is the bare minimum for running VISTA and what is happening is that the C:\ drive is being used up by the swap file in order to keep the system running instead of running out of memory.

Total Physical Memory 0.99 GB
Available Physical Memory 282 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.24 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.30 GB

From this your system is using about 750 +\- MB of Ram to load (.99GB - 282MB = approx 750MB) so there is only 282Mb of physical RAM left for loading programs that you are runnning (including any background apps like Anti Virus etc.) once more than that is loaded it begins swapping what would normally be stored into RAM out to the HDD so that it can then load the parts being used into physical RAM (causing a lot of HDD thrashing which is bad for the HDD also) and slowing down the system since the HDD is much slower to access than RAM and having to constantly move info back and forth is very hard on the system.

You really need to consider getting more RAM to add to the laptop in order to use VISTA (XP used less memory to load itself so would have been a better OS choice for that system) and also should find out what size the HDD is and consider changing it for a new HDD ( figure you can get a 500GB laptop HDD for around $50 which would give you much more HDD space) and then when setting it up should give the C:\ drive more than just 10GB. for the OS to be stored on and use (seems whoever set the system up designed it to split the 120GB HDD in it to 2 partitions - 1 10GB. for the OS and swap file and the second around 100GB for program files etc. to be save on which is kind of a small partition for the OS to have and would really require knowing what you are doing to keep from running out of space on the primary partition - so if you do add a new HDD it would be best to just leave it all as a single partition.

If you decide to just keep it as is then the best thing to do would be to use a partitioning program to resize the C:\ partition and give it some of the free HDD space currently on the D:\ drive (ie. reduce the d: partition to say 60 - 80 GB and then use the extra unallocated space to resize the C: drive to 30 - 50 GB) -- that way you'd have more free space for the swap file and to use for system restore points etc. while still having some free space on your D:\ partition. (This is assuming that you do indeeed have one 120 GB. HDD that is split into 2 partitions and not 2 seperate drives )

 

[Quanza]

Thanks JDFan!

I don't know a lot about Vista, but I do remember hearing it uses more memory to run. Maybe I can get her to change to XP or Win7. Thanks for your help!

 

[TitusFFX]

XP would be a better option if it's an older system since it uses far less power to run normally.
Windows 7 would require even further upgrades than vista to a minimum of 2GB ram and a minimum of 20GB just for the OS alone and a recommended of at least 250-500gb of total for the total size of the hard drive to insure proper performance. *keep in mind it also needs a dual core processor of at least 1.6ghz*

 

[JDFan]

OF the 3 Vista actually uses the most RAM but as mentioned WIN 7 might give you a few problems with drivers on such an old system so I'd suggest either going back to XP or sticking with VISTA and adding more system RAM -- Figure you could replace the 1 GB. it currently has with a 4GB. set for around $50 which would help performance quite a bit (even though only 3.25 GB. would be useable due to having a 32 bit OS) it would stop the system from having to use the HDD swap file which would really speed things up for her so even though the system is aging it might be worth the $50 investment and then work on adjusting the partitions on the existing HDD to give the OS a bit more room to operate and it should work well for her for awhile.