My computer is getting worse and worse

GunJack

if 2 yr old, you'll be running vista, yes?? If so, to clear some room on your C; drive, do this:-

right-click on your C; drive > Properties.

click disk clean-up, and let it do it's thing. Once the box pops up with all the things you can delete, ensure all the tick-boxes are ticked. Then, go to the more options tab, and click to clean up old restore points/shadow copies, and click ok. This will take a bit to calculate, but accept the removals and you'll probably have freed up several GB of space on the drive. If using vista, do this once a week at least to help keep your C; drive slimmer

GillsMan7

closed wrote: »

move your page file to d

run vsp1cln and compcln

set ccleaner to run at boot.

If you want a long term solution, copy all your data to an external drive, make a second backup of really important data to dvd, reinstall windows from the recovery partition, delete the partition which has all the data on it now, and extend the c drive to use up the whole of the area currently being used by c and d, then copy your data back from the external hard disk to the new bigger c drive

If you want to be extra careful, backup the whole hard disk, all partitions to external hard disk using disk imaging software before you start, macrium reflect free, maxblast etc.

I wouldn't advise this. The OP has a good setup with data being on a separate partition to her OS installation. You should always try to maintain this, and I certainly wouldn't recommend this as a long term solution. In any case, it's not a fix as such as having two partitions isn't what's causing the issue.

My guess is it could be page file size, but even then she's got an 80GB HDD so it's unlikely to be the sole cause of the issue. GunJack's suggestion below is a good idea, at least to get the computer working again.

closed

c drive too small is the issue

GillsMan7

closed wrote: »

c drive too small is the issue

Ah, I thought the C: Drive was 80GB, but it's actually only 30GB. That is very small, but still more than big enough for an OS installation, particularly if the OS is XP. She should also be able to install a good few programs on there as well, depending on the size of them (even the MS Office suites won't take up that much room).

So it could well be page files, temp files, etc given that she stores her data on a second partition (in line with best practice for data storage).

sophlowe45

I have vista but I've done disk clean up loads and always on a regular basis but I've only started including delete restore points recently...it didn't help....

Now I can't run it s I don't have enough free space to run it.

GillsMan7

Can you run it in Safe mode? Press F8 when booting the laptop to run it in Safe Mode.

closed

If you want to clear some space, see post 21, disk cleanup and ccleaner do much the same thing, but it's tinkering at the edges

sophlowe45

What should I do after running it in safe mode instead of normal?

Thanks re: post 21 I shall try to get those 2 software mentioned....

With windirstat omce you know where your space has gone what is safe to delete?

Over 60 per cent of my space is gone through x86_microsoft windows.........etc .too many files like this to count....

sophlowe45

Its c drive then windows then winsxs then the hundreds of subfolders equals 62 percent of my c drive, next is system 32 is 13 percent of my c drive...

closed

Those 2 programs (which clear up service packs) are probably already on the system, use the search facility.

windows updates /sxs will continue to grow the size of the windows directory over time, so really you need the long term solution, but for now, try the other suggestions.