trying to delete files & copies keep getting made?

[jimele]

wife's win 7 laptop has c: drive almost completely full. we are deleting files mostly pictures that appear from FB & e-mails & web that she saved. as we delete them we find them again in another folder or even in the same one. what gives?

 

[Lance1]

There are a few ways to delete a file. 1- Right Click the file and select delete. 2- Left Click once on the file to highlight and hit delete on the keyboard. 3- Left Click once on the file to highlight, hold the Shift key down and hit the delete key to permanently delete the file from your system. There are a number of programs that delete files as well. How are you deleting your files?

 

[UsernameIssues]

....deleting files mostly pictures that appear from FB.....

What is the path to these files?
e.g. are they temp files?

 

[jimele]

Lance! - just as you say. UsernameIssues - not sure the path is, will check later. will see if temp files can be deleted.

 

[jimele]

seems that files keep getting put in library also. even after they are burnt to cd as in saving pics. space on drive does not seem to clear up very much at all

 

[DavidE]

wife's win 7 laptop has c: drive almost completely full

How big is the C drive, and how much free space is there ?
If there is not enough free space, many things may not work correctly, if at all.

 

[jimele]

wife's win 7 laptop has c: drive almost completely full

How big is the C drive, and how much free space is there ?
If there is not enough free space, many things may not work correctly, if at all.

1.33gb free of 58.5bg

 

[UsernameIssues]

Try Microsoft's built in disk cleanup tool:

Click on Start and search for disk:



Once the scan completes, select every check box and click on OK.

After the disk cleanup widow goes away, reboot the computer.

The clean up can take hours to complete.

 

[torchwood]

You should have got a warning saying disk space low, at 6Gb!!.
None of the standard cleaners will work now,(they unfortunately create temporary files before deletion).
can you post a copy of disc management.
(control panel >> admin tools >> Computer management >> disk management)
We might be able to increase the size of the C drive, 58.5 seems to be quite low.

Roy

@ UNI see my comment 2nd line

 

[UsernameIssues]

You should have got a warning saying disk space low, at 6Gb!!.
None of the standard cleaners will work now,(they unfortunately create temporary files before deletion).
can you post a copy of disc management.
(control panel >> admin tools >> Computer management >> disk management)
We might be able to increase the size of the C drive, 58.5 seems to be quite low.

Roy

@ UNI see my comment 2nd line

See my test:

drive seems pretty full:


after running disk cleanup and restarting:


edit: each file that was deleted was larger than 0.5GB

 

[torchwood]

Hi UNI,
thanks for that,
but shouldn't you know better, letting it get that full, even if you stuck that 14.8 GB in temp, the exception to the rule.

Roy

 

[DavidE]

@UNI,
Your Windows cleanup was for temporary files.
The OP can't delete User files, such as pictures.
Windows cleanup would not delete user files like pictures, from what i know.

@ALL
I would have "guessed" using shift-delete would immediately and permanently delete selected files would work, without attempting to put them in the recycle bin.

It's also possible there are 2 problems.
1) Lack of disk space
2) "System" corruption.

I don't know if the OP can run a SFC (System File Check) without enough free space.

The OP might need to create bootable CD's to fix this for:
1) Partition Wizard - to possibly increase space on C.
2) A Linux bootable OS - to delete files without Windows running.

I'm just guessing, as usual

 

[UsernameIssues]

Hi UNI,
thanks for that,
but shouldn't you know better, letting it get that full, even if you stuck that 14.8 GB in temp, the exception to the rule.

Roy

The screenshots were from a frozen* Virtual Machine.

*reverts to a clean state upon exit.

No computers were harmed in the making of that post

@UNI,
Your Windows cleanup was for temporary files.
The OP can't delete User files, such as pictures.
Windows cleanup would not delete user files like pictures, from what i know.

Yes, I know... if the temp file clean up worked, then we could see if the normal deletions start working without any further efforts. CHKDSK might be in order at some point,

 

[Layback Bear]

Just some added thoughts.

Many good suggestions have been given. Just a couple more.

1. How much space is used by the Recycle Bin. If it's to small it will stop deleting things until it is emptied.

2. If one right ticks on something and selects Open File Location and then deletes the file from it's location, that should work.