Hard Disk Space Problems

SonicBrewtality · 29 Sep 2010

Hi i'm new and not in any way a computer whiz. I wanted to free up some space on my hard disk so i deleted a few games a odd bits here and there, but for some reason it didn't make any difference to the free space. I made sure the recycle bin was empty and i don't create backups. I also somehow lost 5GB of memory overnight! I ran a disk cleanup and virus scan. It picked up 2 Trojans and got rid of them for me, but i still have the same amount of memory. I don't understand how deleting 3 games that were over a few GB's each didn't make any difference to my hard disk space. Can anyone help?

My laptop also failed to configure windows updates twice on startup. I hope there's nothing seriously wrong.

Lemur · 29 Sep 2010

Try running CCleaner to reclaim space.

Piriform - Download

The viruses worry me. Install malwarebytes. Reboot your pc into safe mode. Run a FULL virus scan and malwarebytes scan. If you find anything, remove, and then reboot again into safe mode. Repeat until nothing is found.

SonicBrewtality · 29 Sep 2010

I just finished that exact process using Malwarebytes. It found nothing at all so i booted up normally again and all of a sudden my disk space went from 75GB to 92GB! I have no idea what's going on!

Lemur · 29 Sep 2010

SonicBrewtality said:

I just finished that exact process using Malwarebytes. It found nothing at all so i booted up normally again and all of a sudden my disk space went from 75GB to 92GB! I have no idea what's going on!

And you did run it in safe mode?

Also, try ccleaner and let me know how that goes.

SonicBrewtality · 29 Sep 2010

Yeh i did. What's the difference between CCleaner and just general Disk Cleanup?

Lemur · 29 Sep 2010

It offers more options for clearing disk space, as well as offers other options.

SonicBrewtality · 29 Sep 2010

The cleaner free'd up 700mb for me. I just ran a registry scan and it says there's tons of problems saying "missing shared dll". What does that mean? There's loads of others too (looks like hundreds)

Lemur · 29 Sep 2010

SonicBrewtality said:

The cleaner free'd up 700mb for me. I just ran a registry scan and it says there's tons of problems saying "missing shared dll". What does that mean? There's loads of others too (looks like hundreds)

Glad you gained the space.

Shared dlls means it's shared by more than one application. When you uninstall a program, sometimes the dll remains in the registry (as is not needed).

LET CCLEANER MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR REGISTRY before removing the missing shared dlls. It's pretty safe, but always err on the side of caution.