Desperate help needed please

[michelleschefe]

MY husband did a system recovery while I was sleep the other night and not knowing what he was doing!! I went to undo it but the only day it will let me click on is today. I guess I am okay with losing all my documents and pics BUT my drive C is showing 100% full. I have deleted programs, defraged, diskclean up etc and nothing is working. I am getting the error message about being low and to do a disk clean up but when I do it nothing changes!!!! Its a emachines desktop running XP. Its old but my son uses this one all the time. I have googled this to death all day and nothing is working. How can my drive be full when it wasnt before the recovery. Doesnt a recovery set everything back to factory settings? I sure wish he woulda have done a restore instead lol. PLEASE HELP!!!!!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Look for any *.tmp files and delete them
Look for any *dmp files and delete them
Look for any $NTuninstall files and delete them

 

[michelleschefe]

I am not quite that smart lol, where do I look for them at?

 

[inzone]

What is the size of the hdd and does it show that size in my computer. In my computer if you right click on the drive and select properties what does it show.

 

[inzone]

I am not quite that smart lol, where do I look for them at?

Windows Explorer.

 

[michelleschefe]

What is the size of the hdd and does it show that size in my computer. In my computer if you right click on the drive and select properties what does it show.

Its showing all blue. Used space says 95.097.831.424 bytes out of 88.5GB, free space says 636.198.912 bytes out of 606MB, although the circle is showing no free space.

capacity says 95.734.030.336 bytes out of 89.1 GB. I dont have a clue as to the first part of your question though lol. I went into system information and it says 1.80 GHz, 448 MB of RAM

 

[michelleschefe]

Windows Explorer.

Im sorry, I am really confused now, sorry.

 

[inzone]

If you end up not being able to do anything at all then if you have the Windows diskyou can reformat and reload the OS , you will lose all your data unless you can save some important things on a usb stick or burn it to a cd. If he did a full system recovery then you may have already lost your data anyway so start over with a clean slate. The good thing about XP is that you can delete the partition and create a new one then format it when you go to reload the Windows cd.

 

[michelleschefe]

If you end up not being able to do anything at all then if you have the Windows diskyou can reformat and reload the OS , you will lose all your data unless you can save some important things on a usb stick or burn it to a cd. If he did a full system recovery then you may have already lost your data anyway so start over with a clean slate. The good thing about XP is that you can delete the partition and create a new one then format it when you go to reload the Windows cd.

I know I have lost everything already and I guess I am okay with it. My problem is that my drive C is full and nothing I do is helping empty it. I do not have the original disks for this computr as it was bought 2nd hand. Is there anyway to free up space without the disk? How is drive C full when it wasnt before the recovery was done. That is what is messing with me.

 

[inzone]

Its showing all blue. Used space says 95.097.831.424 bytes out of 88.5GB, free space says 636.198.912 bytes out of 606MB, although the circle is showing no free space.

capacity says 95.734.030.336 bytes out of 89.1 GB. I dont have a clue as to the first part of your question though lol. I went into system information and it says 1.80 GHz, 448 MB of RAM

It looks like you have a 100gb Hard drive and very little free space.

 

[michelleschefe]

It looks like you have a 100gb Hard drive and very little free space.

I understand that as it is old but I had plenty of free space before he did the recovery so why is drive C full now? We had over 2000 songs on here plus a ton of other stuff and never a problem until the recovery. I am actually on my laptop sitting by my desktop trying to figure this out. The desktop is running super slow right now but I am sure its because something is messed up.

How do I get room is drive C when I have mentioned above what I have tried already?
Thank YOu

 

[inzone]

I actually think that you didn't lose all your data and what the recovery did was create another Windows install based on the original one only with no personal data. If there is a computer repair place nearby they may be able to help you get that back and get rid of the new install. That would be the reason for the disk being full. Something like that would be hard to explain with these posts and even over the phone , so it would help you if there was a repair place.

 

[michelleschefe]

Okay thanks. I cant afford to take it in. I guess it is just garbage now. Ughhh

 

[inzone]

Well , I don't think it's garbage but if you can get into windows explorer you may be able to see what I was refering to and be able to delete some files to free up room. If you go into the start menu and click on accessories in the list that comes up you should see windows explorer. I'm sorry but I have Windows 7 and I am trying to remember XP.

 

[michelleschefe]

Well , I don't think it's garbage but if you can get into windows explorer you may be able to see what I was refering to and be able to delete some files to free up room. If you go into the start menu and click on accessories in the list that comes up you should see windows explorer. I'm sorry but I have Windows 7 and I am trying to remember XP.

Yes I can even get online with it. I will try doing that right now.

 

[michelleschefe]

Well , I don't think it's garbage but if you can get into windows explorer you may be able to see what I was refering to and be able to delete some files to free up room. If you go into the start menu and click on accessories in the list that comes up you should see windows explorer. I'm sorry but I have Windows 7 and I am trying to remember XP.

Okay, when I did that I clicked on windows explorer. It opened up and the folders file is tabbed and in the big box it has 3 folders, downloads, my music, my pictures. Ofcourse that is all empty lol. Do I just hit the search button and type in the ones u mentioned way above and then click search in files and folders or??? Sorry, just been trying to fix this since 11am.

 

[inzone]

If you know something that you had on your computer before then you could try to search for that. I will be back in a few I'M going to see if I have any old xp manuals upstairs.

 

[michelleschefe]

If you know something that you had on your computer before then you could try to search for that. I will be back in a few I'M going to see if I have any old xp manuals upstairs.

Okay ty. I looked for bit torrent and my itunes library but nothing came up

 

[michelleschefe]

If you know something that you had on your computer before then you could try to search for that. I will be back in a few I'M going to see if I have any old xp manuals upstairs.

Okay hold up, I am getting somewhere hehe. I put itunes in the search but then clicked to look in my computer instead of files and folders and a ton of music and itunes stuff came up. Now what?

 

[michelleschefe]

254 files were found using itunes as the search word. we had over 400 songs, just the itunes library(he doesnt remeber how he got that without downloading all of itunes though) and bit torrent. We used them to rip our cds and ipods. WHat do I delete if I Can even delete the stuff? Or what do I do?

 

[inzone]

Ok it seems that what I said before is right and the stuff is still there , so now you want to figure out how to get rid of the duplicate windows install. When you opened up windows explorer the window had a column to the left and the first folder was my documents so now you want to click on the plus sign at my computer and expand it to show the folders there.

 

[michelleschefe]

OK, I clicked on the plus sign and some things dropped down. Now what?

 

[inzone]

One of the folders is drive C and when you expand that you will see all the folders in drive C , at the bottom you should see a windows folder and above that a temp folder. The temp folder should be empty and there should only be one windows folder. if somewhere in that list on the left there is another windows folder then that would be the original windows install.

 

[michelleschefe]

The temp file is empty and only one windows file as well. What is listed is bundle, documents and settings, 5 different my back up folders, my music, program files, temp, and windows

 

[inzone]

Everything on the hdd is in that list to the left and you have to go through all the folders to see what is there and if there is a duplicate windows folder or recovery folder or something that would would refer to the recovery that was done. I have not come accross this situation before so I'm not exactly sure what happened to the windows install that was there before and I'm thinking that all the files were put in a folder and put somewhere , the recovery operation would not have deletede everything it would have saved it so you will have to look for it.