On 4 Apr 2007 at 18:00, Frausto, Richard wrote:

> Hello,I have machine with winxp,penIII,697MHz,512MB and lately I have
> been getting a popup stating low disc space.I have tried to use disc
> cleanup and disc defragg but it seems to be unsuccessful.In disc
> defragg there are alot of defraggmented files that will not go away.I
> have even tried to remove programs that we rarely use but again,there
> is'nt enough free space to remove them. 

  You've told us several things about your machine, but nothing about how 
big the hard drive is!  (There are several ways to find this out, including 
right-clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer and selecting "Properties".)

  Defragmenting a drive doesn't get rid of any files (or, at least, it's not 
supposed to!).  It just shuffles the pieces around on the disk to try and 
put all of each file together for faster access.  As you've found, this 
shuffling process needs some "elbow room" to function.

  The first thing to do is get rid of unnecessary temporary files.  In 
Internet Explorer, go to Tools|Internet Options|General|Browsing History and 
tell it to delete old temporary files.  (You can also set a maximum for how 
much space these are allowed to take up in future.)
  Next, locate your "Temp" folder and see what's in it.  I've seen machines 
where this accounted for more than half of the drive!  This folder may be at 
the root, or inside the WINDOWS folder -- it's possible to have one both 
places, but if so only one will have much in it.
  It's possible that a few files in the Temp folder are needed by things 
that are currently running.  So sort the display by date, and delete 
everything more than a month old.

  Hopefully this gets you to where cleanup and uninstalls can do their jobs.

David Gillett

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