where can i free disk space

edited January 2016 in Hardware
my brother was playing solitaire on my laptop and we werent home for 3 hours and then when i saw the low disk space message, i went to the my computer folder and was devistated to find out that there was 0 bytes of space left. what caused this?

Comments

  • I may be wrong but it could be a hard drive failure, not sure.

    What was the capacity left of the drive before this happened? Can you try deleting stuff and see if that fixes it?
  • I would recommend scanning your drive for possible infection. I've come across some nasty viruses in the past that will grow in size until there is no space left on the hard drive.
  • Try erasing some unneeded garbage/put important objects on a CD or a USB, then grab SpaceSniffer and see what it brings up, and post the screen caps of what is taking up the drive space.
  • Unfortunately, if you don't have any antivirus installed, you'll need to use another computer to download some offline AV software to install to a USB and then boot from the USB to run it. One example would be Microsoft's Windows Defender Offline (I'm not sure if I got the name right). I personally don't recommend it because Windows Defender has an abysmal history with malware detection. I'd personally use AVG's Rescue CD which can be found here: http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-rescue-cd . AVG has a good reputation and does the job, even if it is a bit slow. Some other ones are ESET's Sysrescue Live: http://www.eset.com/int/support/sysrescue/ . A nice list of rescue CDs can be found here: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/13-antiviru ... scue-disk/ . Hope I helped :) Good luck!

    Edit: Also, you might want to get one of those with a GUI as some non tech-savvy people don't know how to use an old-fashioned interface i.e. no clicky buttons and definitely no fancy ellipses.
  • Run the disk cleanup wizard under system tools in accessories.
    Also, shadow copy may be getting a little out of control. Put this in notepad and save as bat. Then run it:
    vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=2GB
    pause
    
    Hopefully you can clear a few kb's of space to at least have this. May want to downsize PageFile temporarily to about 512MB solid to get some critical space to pull something off.
    Might also have Windows 10 install files downloaded as well.
  • jl91569 wrote:
    One example would be Microsoft's Windows Defender Offline (I'm not sure if I got the name right).
    Sounds bogus. And crappy.
    jl91569 wrote:
    AVG has a good reputation and does the job, even if it is a bit slow.
    On the contrary, AVG has the reputation of being the most overhyped bullshit with nothing but false positives.



    Fast forward to the solution:
    Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware: https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/
    Malwarebytes' Chameleon (forces the installation of MBAM if an infected computer refuses it): https://www.malwarebytes.org/chameleon/
  • Fast forward to the solution:
    Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware: https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/
    Malwarebytes' Chameleon (forces the installation of MBAM if an infected computer refuses it): https://www.malwarebytes.org/chameleon/
    I've had the best experiences with MBAM too, so I'd recommend it as well.
  • Fast forward to the solution:
    Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware: https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/
    Malwarebytes' Chameleon (forces the installation of MBAM if an infected computer refuses it): https://www.malwarebytes.org/chameleon/
    I've had the best experiences with MBAM too, so I'd recommend it as well.
    Dude, I know I'm not a mod here, but you've been doing this for weeks, so... Can you stop posting messages with very little info (like "I agree, it's a good program") on topics that are old by a few weeks?
  • TreeSize Free is also a good alternative to Windirstat: https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

    I've actually had TreeSize free find some large files that for some reason Windirstat couldn't find.
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