Comp. Problem - HD Space

[Mr. Satans]

Yeah, wow, I haven't asked a tech question for a very long time. My problem is hard drive space; I have 1.71GB/37.2GB(When Virtual Memory Is OFF) left on my MASTER hard drive, on my SLAVE hard drive I have 239MB/6.31GB left. I am running WINDOWS 98 (everything is updated from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com), Intel Pentium 2 MX (350MHz), with 256MB RAM (I believe it's SD, I dunno, I got the new ram a few years ago).

Anyways, recently (last night) I was downloading some anime episodes and music then went to bed (letting it download overnight) but when I got up and checked my computer, there was a message saying something like "Hard Drive FULL, use disk cleaner to free up extra space." I always use Disk Cleaner and Windows Washer (like 3 times a day) and I defrag/scan disk very often. Also, I had updated my virus scanner (McAffe) and scanned my hard drive before I started downloading stuff; it found one virus but it hadn't been spread around my computer and it removed it. By the way, I had my virtual memory set at 640MB max and 640MB minimum (I read in a PC magazine and from a game performance guide to do that if you have 256MB RAM).

It happend again when I got home from school today. I went into OUTLOOK EXPRESS to check my mail, I had some, 6 junk and 1 that wasn't. When I went to delete the junk mail, it showed one of them in the preview pane (and it had pics in it so in order for it to be previewed pics were downloaded into my comp's temp/cache) then it poped up and gave me the "DISK FULL" thing again.

Please help!

 

[DBZTogeta]

Try cleaning out your history folder, cookies, and files for Internet Explorer. that will free up a little space but not much.

 

[Mr. Satans]

Thats what DISK CLEANER and WINDOWS WASHER do.

Hmm...I think my problem has something to do with my virtual memory, but I dunno...

 

[DBZTogeta]

here's an idea if you have a cd burner. burn some stuff on some cd's and then DELETE them. that should clear some stuff up.

 

[8bit-Fighter]

thats not alot of space left on your hard drives. Try cleaning out the useless crap. Copy your anime onto cd. I think the disk cleaner activates when your hard drive is below a certain amount of space. The virtual memory doesnt take up exactly 640MB when you start up. Thats how much is reserved for it though. So when you see 1.71 gigs free when you boot up. it slowly goes down through out the day as you run programs.

 

[Mr. Satans]

Hmm, yeah but I was thinking about doing that later, after I get a DVD burner so I can back more stuff up without using so many CDs.

Anyways, I think I've found the problem. I defragged last week and recently have downloaded 4 movies and about 5 HL mods (that are very big). I just analyzed my hard drive and found that there was A TON of fragmented space. I'm gonna defrag later.

 

[The Cheese]

Also under your windows folder there is a hidden folder called Installer, delete everything that is in there as it is just a temp folder of executable programs that you have installed. Windows 98 also like to grab hold of memory and sometimes not let it go, so it might be using your cache more and more.

 

[Mr. Satans]

Hmm never knew 'bout that installer folder. I defraged (using Diskeeper 7.0, not the default prog that comes with windows) and it ended up not getting rid of all the fragmented files and the amount of free space I had left went down to 674MB, which is what it is now after deleting the INSTALL folder. I'll go through and grab all my huge video files and other stuff and burn 'em onto CDs, I wasn't ignorant of that idea before its just that im lazy and i like to try other options first.