what's using my space?

I have a relatively new Vista x64-based system. Since I got it in late '08, it ran smoothly till 2 months ago. I had gone away for a week and, upon returning and booting the comp, it began giving problems shortly after. Mainly the screen froze with patterned colored dots on-screen. The last straw that made me decide to reformat was a new error that I videoed with my camera. I uploaded it to mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/?d0y718ggz7atg1j

I reformatted this past Thursday, the 7th. The screen froze like before on 3 separate occasions, but I didn't think it too unusual since Windows had to run literally over 100 auto updates.

For 4 days now, no problems, and the comp runs faster than when I first got it even.

But besides my concern about the screen freezing, I'm wondering what all the space on the HD is being used by. After reformatting, 640GB (of 686GB) was free. Today only 600GB is free. I should mention the only software I put back after formatting is Office 2007. I also updated Adobe. And there're those many auto updates I mentioned, of course.

Any ideas?

Just a thought. Have a look in your program files for a folder called 'Vista Old". If it is there it will be a very large file. Delete it. Cheers, Lee

Thanks for the assistance, Lee. Checked Program Files. No Vista Old folder. Did a Search using those words, nothing.

If you haven't done so already:

Open any folder / click on tools / choose folder options / select 'View' tab and tick "show hidden files and folders". Check out the size content of any Temp. folder.

A quick method of working out where and how your HDD is being used up is to download this (tiny) freeware program 'WinDirStat' which is a HDD statistics viewer and clean-up tool from SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/


On start up, it reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views:
The directory list, which resembles the tree view of the Windows Explorer but is sorted by file/subtree size,
The treemap, which shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away,
The extension list, which serves as a legend and shows statistics about the file types.

Cheers
Lee

I'm not very computer literate by the way, so thanks for spelling things out for me. I did as you said and enabled hidden folders. I didn't get any results for 'Temp' in the Search box, though. I downloaded the program you mentioned and took a screenshot of my tree. Attached below. I guess if the majority of space is occupied by WINDOWS, that's not unusual?

Type in %TEMP% into the start menu search box or the Run box and press enter. This will open the windows temp file. I would suggest emptying that for starters. Click on Edit and then Select all. Right click on the highlighted files and left click on delete.

That worked. Most of the folders in Temp were either empty or small (as in KBs). All files not in folders were also small.

From your posted WinDirStat' image I note: 'winsxs 16.4GB' Your Winsxs folder has a VERY large amount of data in it. Far too much. Run 'WinDirStat' again and open up the + sign next to it to see what you have. Another possible is that you have a huge amount of System Restore files stored in Winsxs. System restore often has a default setting of 14% HDD space reserved for restore files. Nowadays that can be a VERY large chunk of GB's. Clean it up by setting a reasonable size of 2 GB. which is plenty. Here is how to do that in Vista: 1. Make sure you have Admin. rights and then go to 'Run'. Type in ( cmd ) without the brackets and press Enter. 2. Type in the following command prompt ( vssadmin list shadowstorage ) and press Enter. Look for "Used Shadow Copy Storage space" (System restore) which will tell you how much space in GB it is using. 3. You now want to change the max. allowed space. Type in exactly as shown and note spaces or lack of them: ( vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=2GB ) and press Enter. 4. Reboot and run 'WinDirStat' again and check out the 'winsxs' file size now Cheers, Lee

Lee, just a comment. System Restore is in System Volume Information (need to show hidden, system files in Folder Options, View tab to see it) on the root of each monitored drive. It doesn't store anything in winsxs that I'm aware of. I just checked my Win 7 Pro X64 system and winsxs is about 7.5GB, less than half of what fakestree1 reported FOR HIS vISTA SYSTEM. From a few searches, it looks like Vista, over time, can get a very large winsxs folder tree and there is nothing to be done about it. Those files are needed and messing with them can result in a non working system. Just my $.02 worth

Thanks for the heads-up Ztrucker. I just assumed that System Restore was kept in the winsxs folder as it seemed a likely suspect as a HDD space hog (I'm not too familiar with Vista). Anyhow, it's not such a bad move to restrict the size of Windows Restore to 2GB in any Windows OS, as the default HDD % setting can really munch up a lot of space. Cheers, Lee

2. Type in the following command prompt ( vssadmin list shadowstorage ) and press Enter.
For this step, I attach both before and after images, just so you can note whether everything was/is as it should be.

After rebooting from changing the restore size, I ran WinDirStat and saw no significant difference. Image also attached.

winsxs is about the same size (16.8GB now). Opening the + sign shows it has what looks like hundreds of folders, most beginning with the names amd64_microsoft-windows… or x86_microsoft-windows…

But My Computer now says I have 647GB free space. So somehow I reclaimed space.

Couldn't have done it without ya!

Edit: The freezing problem's still present.. kinda? I took a pic with my camera to show what it looks like: http://www.mediafire.com/?j993mr336epz42b

I say kinda because I was changing screen savers to see whether streaming 'video' had an effect on comp performance. All but one screen saver showed in the preview box without error: Aurora. I tested it 3 times. The screen froze every time I tried to preview it. wtf?

I'm glad the space problem is now sorted for you fakestree1. From your Fig 1: "Used System storage space: 54.893 GB" "Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 56.982 GB" OK, so there stands the space Hog, now blatently exposed: System Restore Fig 2. is now as it should be "Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 2GB", but you better create a new restore point as 'Used System Storage Space is showing '0GB'. Just call it 'new'. Re-setting System restore allocated space to 2GB has done the trick. Microsoft still has this silly hangover from the days of small HDD's of setting the default System Restore space in % of HDD (usualy 12-14%). A much better solution for Microsoft's development team would have been to set Vista and W7's default space in GB (2 or 3GB) instead of a %. 14% of a 1TB HDD is 140GB of space for System Restore I'm not a fan of File Sharing Programs such as 'Media Fire' or anything like it (a great way to end up with a Malware infected PC). Most are full of pop-ups, Nagware, Conware and Active-X's and a variety of possible Malware. Getting rid of it might solve your occassional freezing problems. If a File shareing program is a must have for you, consider switching to the freeware version of 'Limeware' as it's probably the best and safest of a bad bunch (make sure you untick the usual offered add-on bandits). My motto with PC Software is: "Less is more" Cheers, Lee PS Edit: As Ztrucker thoughtly pointed out, don't remove anything from the winsxs folder. Apparently, a large winsxs folder is part of the territory with the Vista OS.

create a new restore point as 'Used System Storage Space is showing '0GB'. Just call it 'new'.
How to do this? I've never deliberately created a restore point.

Your explanation about System Restore makes sense. No wonder all my space was being consumed.

I don't normally use mediafire, but I hear it's a common file hoster (not program) of video and image files, similar to how imageshack or photobucket hosts images, so I thought it'd suit my present need. There's no way to "get rid of it," as you say, since it's not a program/software. It's a website; I can either go or not go. And since I don't normally go there, that's easy enough to do.

I agree with your motto lol. After formatting I uninstalled any program I knew I'd never use. If I knew what half the other stuff in 'Uninstall a program' was, I'd uninstall them too. But since I don't know, I won't risk removing something that may be needed. By the same reason, I had already reached the same conclusion as Ztruker about not touching the winsxs folder.

As for the freezing, since formatting and updating I've only had that one isolated incident. That incident is what I'm trying to figure out, and I think I got something. A google search shows other people have this problem: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums…e3-9758671e14b7 and http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=86653

To me the problem lies in that screen saver, Vista, or nVidia, since those're the 3 things I have in common with those people (my specs are the same as in the first link actually). Although no solution or real explanation is provided, it helps to know I'm not alone.

Well, there may be a solution: I see the number 7 in my future.

Everything's been cleared up (mostly), so thanks again.

Hi fakestree1, Sounds like the simple solution to the problem with that particular freezing Screensaver is to never use it Creating a Restore Point is very simple and is a 'must know' for any OS use. 1. Open the Start Menu and right-click on 'Computer', and then select 'Properties'. 2. Click on the “System Protection” link on the left side. 3. Click on 'Create'. 4. Type in New, the Date or whatever you like. 5. Now click on the 'Create' tab. 6. When Vista is finished creating your restore point, you will see a message that the restore point has been successfully created. Doing this before you install any program your not sure about is always a good idea. Cheers, Lee

Well yeah, that's the obvious thing to do.

But I view that as I would the messy room situation: if a kid tries to clean his room by shoving his junk into the closet, the mess still exists. It's just out of sight.

So for me the fact that the problem would still be on my comp would bother me.

I also just want 7. lol

Thanks for explaining how to do restore points and their purpose. Done!