"Startup repair" failing - hard disk space issue?

AnnaNYC said:

And no, he made no attempts at maintenance. I don't think he knows how. He writes emails, plays games and buys movies and downloads them. He said he has close to 100 movies and even more games downloaded. No wonder he's out of hard drive space!

Yeah, no wonder.

Which of his downloaded movies or games is he willing to sacrifice?

I'd delete something sizable that I could replace at little or no cost and see if the machine will then boot.

He may not even know where stuff he downloads is stored, but it's likely somewhere under his C:\users\his-user-name-whatever-it-is directory if he just uses defaults.

Does he acknowledge that his hard drive cannot store an infinite number of items?

Will he entertain the notion that he may have to either buy a new hard drive or start deleting stuff?

He could always get an external drive.

I assume he has no interest in backing up any of this and is willing to lose it all when his hard drive fails, as they all do---possibly not in his lifetime, given "elderly".

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Enter the above command at a command prompt and post a screen shot of the output.

Exactly. He already told me I can delete any/all of the movies, and he understands he needs to do that from now on. I just don't know how to do that without getting into windows. I don't see how I can delete anythinb from the command prompt screen. As soon as I manage to get into Windows, I'll set up auto system restore points, etc. -- plus I'm giving him easy written instructions on how to delete things and empty the recycle bin.

ignatzatsonic said:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Enter the above command at a command prompt and post a screen shot of the output.

Great! Thank you. I'll try it.

States: "is not recognized as an internal or external command"
(The vssadmin... command) I'm trying the C drive / username command now

Hmmm - not working either. I'm researching a bit to find any other commands that may work to access files, or a command to compress the drive... something.

AnnaNYC said:

I'm trying the C drive / username command now

It's not a command.

It's a location on the C drive.

Do you know how to navigate at a command prompt?

Get to a command prompt.

enter this:

cd..

That's cd followed by two dots.

Hit the enter key.

Do it again and again until the prompt appears as

C:\

and nothing more.

Advise when you are sitting at C:\ for a prompt, not some sub directory.

No, I have no idea how to use commands to navigate the hard drive. I'll post when I'm at the C prompt. I need a little while on this end.