Reformatted, Installed Vista HP - 72 Gigs and growing!

[UncleSpellbinder]

Hi, all.

I ended up reformatting and re-installing Vista Home Premium 64-bit. Before the reformat, my install never passed the 27 Gig

mark. 2 days after reinstall, and I'm already at 73 Gigs. Yesterday was 59 Gigs and I have done nothing except browse the net. I've

cleaned up "shadow copies" via dick cleanup, and no change. Very confused.

[jnelsoninjax]

Indexing is the first thing that came to mind when I was reading about your problem... to disable this, go to my computer, right click on your HDD, select properties, un-check the box, 'index this drive for faster searching'. There also is an Indexing Service that you can disable through the services control panel inside Administrative Tools. Also I highly recommend CCleaner, http://www.ccleaner.com/, it is a nice freeware program that will scan you drive for temp and otherwise unused files, and show them to you as a list with the option of deleting them. One other thing: Have you checked to see how big the swap file is? Also I would check the browsers cache and history settings, and possibly delete them.

[Max Veteran]

Hibernation file will be taking up 8GB of that.

[UncleSpellbinder]

I use CCleaner regularly, so that should be no issue. As far as indexing, I don't believe I had that disabled before the reformat. Isn't that kind of necessary?

Not sure how yo the check the swap file size, never done that before. IE7 has not yet been used, so I presume the cache is non existant. And my Firefox

cache clears on exit.

By the way, since the original post, Ive gained 4 Gigs (73 Gigs to 77 Gigs of used space) and have done nothing but use Firefox.

Edited January 8, 2009 by UncleSpellbinder

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

The biggest issue I had with Windows Vista was system restore. For some reason, it would take up so much hard drive space. Here's what I suggest: download and install the trial version of TuneUp Utilities 2009. It has a "free up disk space" feature which deletes unnecessary files like restore points, Windows update backups, and temporary files.

As I'm typing this, I'm deleting 88GB worth of unnecessary restore points. Unbelievable eh? :|

[portauthority]

Download SequiaView to examine this further

[BandraGuy]

Try using Treesize from JAM software to find out which directory is using up the HDD space.

[jnelsoninjax]

:iiam:I have a 75 GB partition set for Ultimate 64 and I am only using 35 of it! I read your other post regarding not being able to boot and it seemed really odd also, is your system still covered under warranty? If so, I believe that you may have a boot sector virus, and it seems that it must be residing on the MFT (master file table), unless there is some other :crazy: explanation, I would see if HP will warranty the HDD out! :)

[hjf288]

Jesus thats huge.. Ive had this Vista install since I first installed it on release day and I'm using 62.9GB

Thats with various games and applications installed:

Fallout3, Combat Arms, ElSword, COD5, WIC, Oracle SQL, Photoshop, Battlefield 2, EVE Online (Most of my games take up my space, Windows itself isnt that large)

What have you been doing to accrue such a large amount of used space?

[UncleSpellbinder]

I did a full reformat and re-install. Ran Avast antivirus, have Spybot Search & Destroy fully updated. Is the boot sector virus theory likely. And If so, how might I detect it?

[UncleSpellbinder]

...What have you been doing to accrue such a large amount of used space?

Installed yesterday morning. Only installed a few programs - DivX, Firefox, Thunderbird and such.

EDIT:

According to TuneUp Utilities 2009, I have 38 Gigs of space taken up by restore points??!!??

[jnelsoninjax]

http://www.f-prot.com/download/

This comes recommended highly from my friend/certified tech. the only other way to check if a boot sector virus is indeed in your system is to get a bootable cd with a virus scanner on it, I recommend Kaspersky's boot cd, an image is located here: http://dnl-eu10.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk/

Here's to hoping it is not a boot sector virus! :beer:

Edit: I see your pic about restore points, turn it off, then turn it back on, you will then get your space back! To do this you need to go to system properties, then go to advanced system settings, click on the system protection tab, wait, wait, wait some more, then it should show your partitions, uncheck the box next to each on of them, press apply, then recheck them as you see fit.

Edited January 8, 2009 by Jonathan Nelson

[UncleSpellbinder]

http://www.f-prot.com/download/

This comes recommended highly from my friend/certified tech. the only other way to check if a boot sector virus is indeed in your system is to get a bootable cd with a virus scanner on it, I recommend Kaspersky's boot cd, an image is located here: http://dnl-eu10.kaspersky-labs.com/devbuilds/RescueDisk/

Here's to hoping it is not a boot sector virus! :beer:

Appreciate thi info!! I'll check them out.

As far as the space used, Ive gone down to just under 43 Gigs of used space. Which is about right as I have 10 gigs of movies in my "Videos" folder.

Thanks, Anaron for the Tune Up Utilities link!

Edit: I see your pic about restore points, turn it off, then turn it back on, you will then get your space back! To do this you need to go to system properties, then go to advanced system settings, click on the system protection tab, wait, wait, wait some more, then it should show your partitions, uncheck the box next to each on of them, press apply, then recheck them as you see fit.

Thanks, Jonathan. And I'm bookmarking this thread for future reference. You guys have been a magnificent help.

[jnelsoninjax]

No problem! Were here to help! :happy:

[UncleSpellbinder]

No problem! Were here to help! :happy:

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Haha, I figured it'd be the restore points. You're quite welcome UncleSpellbinder! :)

PS: Thanks for the PM. Appreciation goes a long way for me. (Y)

[Elliot B.]

Download SequiaView to examine this further

FreeSize Free is better.

[soldier1st]

By Default System Restore uses 15% of your drive for it's restore points and the fact that you have 8GB ram would also mean your swap file would be very big as well and the hibernate file will be very large well.under tuneup utilities go under drive space explorer and that will tell you what is consuming what.if your not hurting for space i would not worry about it but knowing HP they must have preinstalled alot of junk.on a 500GB drive system restore would consume 75GB max for the restore points.