One thing that I haven't seem mentioned: are you using hibernation? Windows creates hiberfil.sys, which is the same size as your physical RAM (4GB). If you don't want to use hibernation (which is quite different from S3 sleep), get rid of it.
What is hiberfil.sys and How Do I Delete It? - How-To Geek
My Windows folder (7 Pro X64) comes in at under 20GB, by the way. I don't regret buying a 120GB SSD for my boot drive, though. Allows me to be a bit more careless.
So, the 30GB SSD came free with the 1TB HDD, so we thought we'd use it as a boot drive since Windows was only supposed to need 20GB.
So far, I've reinstalled Windows. During install, at the prompt "Where do you want to install Windows?" I deleted one partition so that the result was:
Disk 0 Partition: System Reserved; total size 100MB; free 7.0MB
Disk 0 Unallocated space; total size 27.9GB; free 27.9GB
After selecting "unallocated space" and installing Windows, and running disk cleanup, drive C shows 1.29GB free of 27.8GB.
The folders in C and their size / size on disk are:
Perflogs = 0
Program Files = 227MB / 229MB
Program Files (x86) = 136MB / 138MB
Users = 89.7MB / 90.5MB
Windows = 10.5GB / 10.6GB
There is no hiberfil.sys file in C that I can find, though "hibernate" is an active option.
I'm currently reading through the article Hard Disk Space - Free Up and Recover to see what else I should do...I note gregrocker's suggestion of using ccleaner too. Since this is a brand new build and there are no other programs installed on the drive at all, I'm really baffled by this space issue!
I'm not a IT person at all, but can trouble shoot most issues with logic, years of experience with PCs at home and at work, and good instructions. Thanks for all of the help and your patience.
Hiberfile.sys is likely hidden.
If you don't want to use hibernation, you can do as Bobkn mentioned in post 11.
Turn it off with this method:
In an elevated command prompt, type powercfg -h off and press Enter
That should get you back 4 GB if it is not already turned off.
My C Windows folder is 17.8 GB on a year old installation, with another 4 GB in Program Files folders.
In Control Panel>Folder options unhide Hidden files to see if Hiberfil.sys is onboard already. Either way I'd disable it for now. Later you can move it to the HD if you want the modern hibernate function, or you may have room for it by then.
You can run it this way for awhile to set it up and shake it out, CClean and defrag to compact it more.
What programs installed to the two Program folders? How much space did they take in the hidden Program Data folders? What's in the hidden User appdata folders? CCleaner will take a broom to that.
OK I just executed the powercfg -h off command that ignatzatsonic recommended and now with hibernate deleted we're back into safe territory with 4.3 GB free, but "sleep" mode is also disabled (greyed out on the shut down options button). I think I will need that back, but can do that later as you suggest.
In "Program Files" are the following folders:
Common Files
DVD Maker
Internet Explorer
MSBuild
Reference Assemblies
Windows Defender
Windows Journal
Windows Mail
Windows Media Player
Windows NT
Windows Photo Viewer
Windows Portable Devices
Windows Sidebar
In "Program Files (x86)" are some of the same from above (Hmmm, is this why the space is being eaten up?)
Common Files
Internet Explorer
MSBuild
Reference Assemblies
Windows Defender
Windows Mail
Windows Media Player
Windows NT
Windows Photo Viewer
Windows Portable Devices
Windows Sidebar
All of those are on my system, so it looks like a default bunch of folders.
You may have something else going on.
Have you used something like WinDirStat to get a better idea of what is taking up space?
I don't know if you can uninstall Windows Defender but I'd only be running Microsoft Security Essentials either way.
I don't see anything that's unusual since most of those install with Win7 and can be needed.
Besides the suggestion to study closely WinDirStat, I'd also run CCleaner Disk and REgistry cleaner now followed by Puran boot time defrag with full disk check.
Puran Defrag Free Edition
CCleaner 3.19.1721 - FileHippo.com
Have you confirmed you currently have no restore points?
If I understand you correctly, you have looked at System Restore.
Below is a pic of the control slider used to allot space to that function. Is this where you set the 106 MB size mentioned in post 1?
Re: the slider. Yes, that's where it was set to 106 MB. After the reinstall of Windows, it was set at 1% (275.24MB) for max usage. I just deleted the restore points, and free disk space is now 4.62GB. I'll download the other cleanup programs to a thumb drive and will run those and see what happens. I'll let you know what the outcome is so we can all put this to rest! Thanks!
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