Quick Steps (for XP and Vista and probably for W7)
Open My Computer
R-Click on Local Disk C (or your primary hard drive) and choose Properties
Click on the Tools Tab and then the Check Now Button which opens a new window
Check the boxes for "Automatically fix..." and "Scan for and attempt recovery..."
Click Start which will open a new window that says "The disk check could not be performed... Do you want to schedule this disk check to occur the next time you restart the computer?"
Click YES, then OK out of the Local Disk Properties window and close the My Computer window.
Then the next time you will not be needing your computer for an hour or two or more, after closing all your running programs, turn off the computer. Then restart it and follow the instrutions, then go do something else while Check Disk (or Disk Check) does it's thing... or you can watch the first time to see it go through the five steps.
Here's more details..
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265
http://www.updatexp.com/windows-xp-chkdsk.html
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/guide-to-using-check-disk-in-windows-vista/
Friday, January 14, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
How To Free Up Space On A Hard Drive - Including Updates To A Couple Of Previous Posts
http://lennythecomputerguy.blogspot.com/2010/09/system-restore-tutorial-how-to-set.html
http://lennythecomputerguy.blogspot.com/2010/08/ccleaner-how-i-use-it-to-manage-my.html
I have linked the above two posts, one about how to use and set up System Restore and System Restore Points (SRP's) and the other about how I use CCleaner and how CCleaner can be used to clean out older SRP's on computers that are facing the need to remove stuff that is filling up a hard drive. SRP's use up a lot of hard drive space so getting rid of unneeded SRP's is a quick and easy first step in freeing up space on a hard drive.
Here is a series of posts that I made in the CHAD Yahoo Group trying to help someone else free up space on their nearly full hard drive.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lenny The Computer Guy" Vasbinder [mailto:lennythecomputerguy@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 10:35 AM
Subject: RE: [CHAD] Running out of space
Do you know what is taking up the bulk of that space? I would start with that folder and look to see what you are saving and if it's not something you need immediate access to, move those files to an external hard drive... or like some say, maybe it's time to get a NEW bigger hard drive and make the new hard drive your primary operating drive and use your current drive as extra storage.
I don't download/save a lot of music or movies (two of bigger users of hard drive space) but if you do, that is where I would look first as places to move/delete files to get some quick space. Each movie will usually run over 1GB.
Tree Size Free might be a tool that will help you figure things out.
http://download.cnet.com/TreeSize-Free/3000-2248_4-10139400.html
There is another program that I wanted to direct you to that has been around forever but I'm drawing a blank on the name of it right at the moment so I went to Download.com to see if I could find the program but came up with the above instead. Maybe someone else will recommend the one I was thinking of first.
If you don't already use CCleaner, that will usually get rid of a lot of crap that isn't needed but it won't give you the kind of space you are probably looking for... but it's a good tool to run daily as a general rule. I have a blog post on how I use CCleaner since I don't like the default settings, which clean out more than I like.
Lenny Vasbinder - 504-667-5111
Skype, YM & Blogspot - LennyTheComputerGuy
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 10:14 AM
To: CHaD
Subject: [CHAD] Running out of space
I discovered yesterday that my 'space' is about to run out. It has been fluctuating but currently I have 14G free of 288G
I am running Vista on this desktop.
How can I find out what duplicates, if any, there might be or what else I don't need.
Any help is appreciated.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lenny The Computer Guy" Vasbinder [mailto:lennythecomputerguy@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 5:05 PM
Subject: RE: [CHAD] Running out of space
I'm not sure about Carbonite but I use Mozy Online Backup and they keep the past 30 backups (or more) on their servers and using the on-computer program, I'm able to look at my previous backups and *where* the files/folders are located kind of like using Windows Explorer so you may be able to go online or through your Carbonite Client and see where these folders actually belong and move them back into their proper place. Of course, if you restored "all my stuff", then why do you have these extra folders left on your desktop? With Mozy, it restores the file back to it's original place but maybe there is a way to direct it to the desktop. I've only had to use Mozy a couple of times over the past several years, the last time a year or so a go when I mucked up my Favorites/Bookmarks when I messed up using Xmarks syncing over 3,000 links between IE and FF on two different computers.
Fortunately I was able to just delete my mucked up sync job and restore my backup from a few hours earlier. I then read the fine print on XMarks and did the sync job properly and other than occasional minor glitches, all of my browsers on my desktop and laptop have exact copies of Favorites/Bookmarks no matter which browser/computer I'm using when I save a new Favorite/Bookmark.
I've never had to do a major restore from Mozy but for the few minor ones I've done, it's worked as advertised. Not a bad thing for free. ;-) For major backups for a complete reinstall, imaging is the best/easiest way to go but for the occasional PICNIC problem when a user deletes a file or mucks up a file and needs a copy from the day or days before, Mozy works GREAT. For a BIG backup, Mozy offers sending your files via CD or DVD for quicker restore since downloading lots of gigs of files would be time consuming.
Lenny Vasbinder - 504-667-5111
Skype, YM & Blogspot - LennyTheComputerGuy
-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 2:21 PM
Subject: Re: [CHAD] Running out of space
Lenny, thanks for your tips!
Carbonite, I was able to 'restore' all my stuff. I didn't get the laptop fixed right away so in the meantime I 'restored' to this desktop. Now the desktop has stuff on it that was actually for the laptop. (Ex: Webcam). And there are files that I'm not sure where they belong. (Ex: a folder is Drivers)
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lenny The Computer Guy" Vasbinder [mailto:lennythecomputerguy@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 11:18 AM
Subject: RE: [CHAD] Disk cleanup
As Rick said, it's a good idea to check this from time to time... just to see what Windows is saying *may* be junk you *may* want to get rid of. By default, only some of the things found will be checked and the other stuff, you should carefully check before deleting. I usually delete all the things checked by default.
Interestingly, I haven't run this in a while on my Vista laptop and there was a Hibernation File Cleaner (unchecked by default) of nearly 3GB. I'm sure I can delete this but am checking it out to be sure. I believe this will be rebuilt if needed in the future. I rarely put my computer into Hibernation but it will on rare occasion do so when the battery is about to go dead if I wasn't paying attention to my battery level. This thread says we should keep this file, especially on laptops, so I guess I'll keep it. http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/microsoft-public-windows-vista-performance-maintenance/145031-disk-cleanup-how-delete-hibernation-file-cleaner-893mb.html OR http://tinyurl.com/2ec2lmm
This article explains things in more detail. http://oreilly.com/pub/a/windows/2007/03/06/cleaning-up-your-disk-drives-in-windows-vista.html OR http://tinyurl.com/24kzoz9
I think this temp file cleanup, as well as defragging, registry cleaning, etc., is all covered in a FULL SCAN using the online Windows Live OneCare scan.
For Vista/W7 - http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/center/whatsnew.htm
For XP - http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm
I run these online scans once a month on my computers and tell my family, friends and customers to also do this... to save you from having to do all these things manually and the FULL SCAN also does a malware scan of the computer as a backup or checkup to your regular security programs. They can take a couple of hours so I run them when I'm not going to be needing the computer for a few hours or usually when sleeping, then when I wake up, I can see what the scan found and click the drop down arrows to check/un-check what I want the online scan to clean/fix.
On another note, that I think we covered in your (or someone else) prior thread, a BIG waste of space is often found in System Restore points. The default setting is to use 12% of a hard drives space for restore points but with modern BIG hard drives, this can amount to a LOT of space, for example, on a 100GB hard drive (not that big), this amounts to 12GB, on a 500GB hard drive, it's 60GB. If you use CCleaner, you can use their Restore Point cleanup tool to manually remove some of the restore points (by default, it will not allow you to remove the most recent one). It's best to actually go into your System settings (Control Panel>System) and change the default settings to a smaller percentage, depending on your hard drive size. I keep mine at only 3% which still allows for up to 30 restore points, which is overkill in most cases. I rarely use System Restore but when I did have to use it, I usually only went back a day or two. Even when you have your System Restore settings to a much lower percentage of your hard drive, you can still use CCleaner's tool to remove some of the restore points. I will usually leave the oldest and then remove every other SRP. I only do this about once every two weeks and once the oldest restore point is more than 30 days old, I delete all over 30 days and then every other one. This allows me to keep SRP's up to 30 days old and then only every other day's SRP instead of every day, which keeps the total space used around 1/2 of the 3%. AFAIK, 3% is the lowest percentage you can use but on a BIG hard drive, 3% is a LOT of space.
Lenny Vasbinder - 504-667-5111
Skype, YM & Blogspot - LennyTheComputerGuy
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 7:43 AM
To: CHaD
Subject: [CHAD] Disk cleanup
OS is Vista. Go to Computer > right clik & C Drive > click properties > on the General tab, below the pie is a button that says Disk Clean up. I've never used that button before. Is that a good thing to do?
I do go to the Tools tab & run Error checking & Defrag.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lenny The Computer Guy" Vasbinder [mailto:lennythecomputerguy@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 7:03 PM
Subject: RE: [CHAD] It doesn't make sense
I suspect that Carbonite was the problem causing your hard drive to fill up since you said that you turned it off and you immediately saw an additional 20GB of free space.
Online backup programs, at least I know with MozyHome Free, will create a temporary folder of files it is backing up during the backup process and then once the backup is complete, it releases that folder. Mozy also has a way, besides backing up online, to also backup to an external hard drive but I guess if someone changed the drive letter to their own internal hard drive, Mozy would create those backups on the host computer instead of an external hard drive. I'm not sure if Carbonite does this since I haven't used Carbonite in many years opting to use Mozy when I was testing both of them several/many years ago. If Carbonite is doing this internal backup on your hard drive and it's scheduled to do daily backups... or if it's the online backup temp folder that is not releasing after uploaded that is happening, either of these would cause the loss of hard drive space that you have.
I'm also wondering what else you have saved in your 288GB hard drive. Most folks that have that much stuff saved at least know what is taking up the bulk of that space... like downloaded movies, videos, audio, etc., as saving regular files like documents, etc., would take hundreds of thousands of files to use up that much space... and even saving BIG image files would take thousands to tens of thousands of files. If you are a professional or even a hobbyist photographer and save every photo you take, that could be addressed by reducing the size of the original image file, for example, if you are saving each picture in a super high resolution, where each file is over 5MB in size, you could reduce them to 1MB (still a big picture size) and save 80% of the hard drive space they were taking, presuming you have thousands of 5MB images. Music files can also be saved in different formats to reduce the size of each file, presuming you have thousands of songs saved in one of the bigger media formats.
Were you ever able to use CCleaner to examine your System Restore Points and Remove some of them?
Lenny Vasbinder - 504-667-5111
Skype, YM & Blogspot - LennyTheComputerGuy
http://lennythecomputerguy.blogspot.com/2010/08/ccleaner-how-i-use-it-to-manage-my.html
I have linked the above two posts, one about how to use and set up System Restore and System Restore Points (SRP's) and the other about how I use CCleaner and how CCleaner can be used to clean out older SRP's on computers that are facing the need to remove stuff that is filling up a hard drive. SRP's use up a lot of hard drive space so getting rid of unneeded SRP's is a quick and easy first step in freeing up space on a hard drive.
Here is a series of posts that I made in the CHAD Yahoo Group trying to help someone else free up space on their nearly full hard drive.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lenny The Computer Guy" Vasbinder [mailto:lennythecomputerguy@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 10:35 AM
Subject: RE: [CHAD] Running out of space
Do you know what is taking up the bulk of that space? I would start with that folder and look to see what you are saving and if it's not something you need immediate access to, move those files to an external hard drive... or like some say, maybe it's time to get a NEW bigger hard drive and make the new hard drive your primary operating drive and use your current drive as extra storage.
I don't download/save a lot of music or movies (two of bigger users of hard drive space) but if you do, that is where I would look first as places to move/delete files to get some quick space. Each movie will usually run over 1GB.
Tree Size Free might be a tool that will help you figure things out.
http://download.cnet.com/TreeSize-Free/3000-2248_4-10139400.html
There is another program that I wanted to direct you to that has been around forever but I'm drawing a blank on the name of it right at the moment so I went to Download.com to see if I could find the program but came up with the above instead. Maybe someone else will recommend the one I was thinking of first.
If you don't already use CCleaner, that will usually get rid of a lot of crap that isn't needed but it won't give you the kind of space you are probably looking for... but it's a good tool to run daily as a general rule. I have a blog post on how I use CCleaner since I don't like the default settings, which clean out more than I like.
Lenny Vasbinder - 504-667-5111
Skype, YM & Blogspot - LennyTheComputerGuy
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 10:14 AM
To: CHaD
Subject: [CHAD] Running out of space
I discovered yesterday that my 'space' is about to run out. It has been fluctuating but currently I have 14G free of 288G
I am running Vista on this desktop.
How can I find out what duplicates, if any, there might be or what else I don't need.
Any help is appreciated.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lenny The Computer Guy" Vasbinder [mailto:lennythecomputerguy@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 5:05 PM
Subject: RE: [CHAD] Running out of space
I'm not sure about Carbonite but I use Mozy Online Backup and they keep the past 30 backups (or more) on their servers and using the on-computer program, I'm able to look at my previous backups and *where* the files/folders are located kind of like using Windows Explorer so you may be able to go online or through your Carbonite Client and see where these folders actually belong and move them back into their proper place. Of course, if you restored "all my stuff", then why do you have these extra folders left on your desktop? With Mozy, it restores the file back to it's original place but maybe there is a way to direct it to the desktop. I've only had to use Mozy a couple of times over the past several years, the last time a year or so a go when I mucked up my Favorites/Bookmarks when I messed up using Xmarks syncing over 3,000 links between IE and FF on two different computers.
Fortunately I was able to just delete my mucked up sync job and restore my backup from a few hours earlier. I then read the fine print on XMarks and did the sync job properly and other than occasional minor glitches, all of my browsers on my desktop and laptop have exact copies of Favorites/Bookmarks no matter which browser/computer I'm using when I save a new Favorite/Bookmark.
I've never had to do a major restore from Mozy but for the few minor ones I've done, it's worked as advertised. Not a bad thing for free. ;-) For major backups for a complete reinstall, imaging is the best/easiest way to go but for the occasional PICNIC problem when a user deletes a file or mucks up a file and needs a copy from the day or days before, Mozy works GREAT. For a BIG backup, Mozy offers sending your files via CD or DVD for quicker restore since downloading lots of gigs of files would be time consuming.
Lenny Vasbinder - 504-667-5111
Skype, YM & Blogspot - LennyTheComputerGuy
-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 2:21 PM
Subject: Re: [CHAD] Running out of space
Lenny, thanks for your tips!
Carbonite, I was able to 'restore' all my stuff. I didn't get the laptop fixed right away so in the meantime I 'restored' to this desktop. Now the desktop has stuff on it that was actually for the laptop. (Ex: Webcam). And there are files that I'm not sure where they belong. (Ex: a folder is Drivers)
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lenny The Computer Guy" Vasbinder [mailto:lennythecomputerguy@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 11:18 AM
Subject: RE: [CHAD] Disk cleanup
As Rick said, it's a good idea to check this from time to time... just to see what Windows is saying *may* be junk you *may* want to get rid of. By default, only some of the things found will be checked and the other stuff, you should carefully check before deleting. I usually delete all the things checked by default.
Interestingly, I haven't run this in a while on my Vista laptop and there was a Hibernation File Cleaner (unchecked by default) of nearly 3GB. I'm sure I can delete this but am checking it out to be sure. I believe this will be rebuilt if needed in the future. I rarely put my computer into Hibernation but it will on rare occasion do so when the battery is about to go dead if I wasn't paying attention to my battery level. This thread says we should keep this file, especially on laptops, so I guess I'll keep it. http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/microsoft-public-windows-vista-performance-maintenance/145031-disk-cleanup-how-delete-hibernation-file-cleaner-893mb.html OR http://tinyurl.com/2ec2lmm
This article explains things in more detail. http://oreilly.com/pub/a/windows/2007/03/06/cleaning-up-your-disk-drives-in-windows-vista.html OR http://tinyurl.com/24kzoz9
I think this temp file cleanup, as well as defragging, registry cleaning, etc., is all covered in a FULL SCAN using the online Windows Live OneCare scan.
For Vista/W7 - http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/center/whatsnew.htm
For XP - http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm
I run these online scans once a month on my computers and tell my family, friends and customers to also do this... to save you from having to do all these things manually and the FULL SCAN also does a malware scan of the computer as a backup or checkup to your regular security programs. They can take a couple of hours so I run them when I'm not going to be needing the computer for a few hours or usually when sleeping, then when I wake up, I can see what the scan found and click the drop down arrows to check/un-check what I want the online scan to clean/fix.
On another note, that I think we covered in your (or someone else) prior thread, a BIG waste of space is often found in System Restore points. The default setting is to use 12% of a hard drives space for restore points but with modern BIG hard drives, this can amount to a LOT of space, for example, on a 100GB hard drive (not that big), this amounts to 12GB, on a 500GB hard drive, it's 60GB. If you use CCleaner, you can use their Restore Point cleanup tool to manually remove some of the restore points (by default, it will not allow you to remove the most recent one). It's best to actually go into your System settings (Control Panel>System) and change the default settings to a smaller percentage, depending on your hard drive size. I keep mine at only 3% which still allows for up to 30 restore points, which is overkill in most cases. I rarely use System Restore but when I did have to use it, I usually only went back a day or two. Even when you have your System Restore settings to a much lower percentage of your hard drive, you can still use CCleaner's tool to remove some of the restore points. I will usually leave the oldest and then remove every other SRP. I only do this about once every two weeks and once the oldest restore point is more than 30 days old, I delete all over 30 days and then every other one. This allows me to keep SRP's up to 30 days old and then only every other day's SRP instead of every day, which keeps the total space used around 1/2 of the 3%. AFAIK, 3% is the lowest percentage you can use but on a BIG hard drive, 3% is a LOT of space.
Lenny Vasbinder - 504-667-5111
Skype, YM & Blogspot - LennyTheComputerGuy
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 7:43 AM
To: CHaD
Subject: [CHAD] Disk cleanup
OS is Vista. Go to Computer > right clik & C Drive > click properties > on the General tab, below the pie is a button that says Disk Clean up. I've never used that button before. Is that a good thing to do?
I do go to the Tools tab & run Error checking & Defrag.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Lenny The Computer Guy" Vasbinder [mailto:lennythecomputerguy@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 7:03 PM
Subject: RE: [CHAD] It doesn't make sense
I suspect that Carbonite was the problem causing your hard drive to fill up since you said that you turned it off and you immediately saw an additional 20GB of free space.
Online backup programs, at least I know with MozyHome Free, will create a temporary folder of files it is backing up during the backup process and then once the backup is complete, it releases that folder. Mozy also has a way, besides backing up online, to also backup to an external hard drive but I guess if someone changed the drive letter to their own internal hard drive, Mozy would create those backups on the host computer instead of an external hard drive. I'm not sure if Carbonite does this since I haven't used Carbonite in many years opting to use Mozy when I was testing both of them several/many years ago. If Carbonite is doing this internal backup on your hard drive and it's scheduled to do daily backups... or if it's the online backup temp folder that is not releasing after uploaded that is happening, either of these would cause the loss of hard drive space that you have.
I'm also wondering what else you have saved in your 288GB hard drive. Most folks that have that much stuff saved at least know what is taking up the bulk of that space... like downloaded movies, videos, audio, etc., as saving regular files like documents, etc., would take hundreds of thousands of files to use up that much space... and even saving BIG image files would take thousands to tens of thousands of files. If you are a professional or even a hobbyist photographer and save every photo you take, that could be addressed by reducing the size of the original image file, for example, if you are saving each picture in a super high resolution, where each file is over 5MB in size, you could reduce them to 1MB (still a big picture size) and save 80% of the hard drive space they were taking, presuming you have thousands of 5MB images. Music files can also be saved in different formats to reduce the size of each file, presuming you have thousands of songs saved in one of the bigger media formats.
Were you ever able to use CCleaner to examine your System Restore Points and Remove some of them?
Lenny Vasbinder - 504-667-5111
Skype, YM & Blogspot - LennyTheComputerGuy
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