The Magical Partition and the 8.37mb Cache

[Irishsgb]

I desperately need you guys' help. Let me explain to you my situation. I have a P2 400mhz, 384mb RAM, a GeForce 2, and Windows ME. Unfortunately, I have a completely computer illiterate mom (she's the reason we still have ME) and a moderatley comp-literate dad, who is well-meaning, but has screwed our computer over. What happened was, my dad was upgrading the computers RAM and Hard Drive space, when he got the bright idea to partition the hard drive. He gave everyone in the family some space (my space being the largest portion) and gave the C: enough space to store ME and about a Gig more. For a while, this worked perfectly. Lately however, we have been running out of space on the C: for no apparent reason. It was getting to the point of having only 30mb left, not nearly enough of a cache to run the games I would like. So, I moved stuff. A whole lot of stuff. I deleted stuff. A whole lot of stuff, and eneded up with a cache of about 180mb, sufficient for running Morrowind. Yet, within a day or to, it went down to about 157mb on average. Worried, but ok as long as my game was running, I took a 2 week vacation. Well, as soon as I got back my mother informed me that we now have a 0mb cache (which I discovered later was an exageration), and no matter what we deleted, it wouldn't go back up. We couldn't even run Norton Anti-Virus. I talked with my dad about it, and he said that someone had changed the spot that the virtual memory was supposed to be stored (D, to C:. He seems to think that that was the bulk of the problem, but I don't. He has changed it back to D:, but the cache still hasn't gone up, plus, when do you really use virtual memory other than when you are downloading something huge or running straining programs (which is something my parents don't do often)? Here's the weird thing, my comp can't run Norton's, but it can run Wolfenstein - perfectly..... wtf? Also, anything that I have downloaded recently that was in Winzip format won't work. I downloaded America's Army, and when I clicked on the Winzip Icon (which doesn't look like a regular Winzip icon, it looks more like a white page with the Winzip icon on it) a message came up saying "Zip file is damaged, truncated, or has been changed since it was created. If you downloaded this file, try downloading again." During the downloading process, the C: is low on Disk Space message came up and it cleaned out the drive (giving a total of 8mb). Could this have anything to do with it? My dad wants to reformat the hard drive, and give C: 2 gig more. I really, really, don't want to do this. I have many programs that I have downloaded, and many songs, and many games, and many things, that I don't want to have too burn to some CD and stick in after the reformating. I also don't know if the problem will come up again. Have you any idea what is wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated.

<i>E'loi, E'loi, la'ma sa-bach-tha-ni?</i>

 

[jc14all]

You didn't say how large your HDD is. Have you tried "Disk Cleanup" (Start|Programs/Accessories/System Tools) then "Scan Disk", then "Defrag".

Vitual memory is actually a designated space on the HDD, so if you are playing games, the games usually say on the box...(needs 200 MB HDD Space, plus an additional 70 MB), the additional space is for virtual memory. The only way to clear vitual memory is to reboot you system. So, if you guys are running low on HDD space, its a good idea to run the utilities at least twice a month, the shut down for about twenty seconds and restart.

If you have a removeable drive, move some of your apps to it, delete unnecessary trivial stuff, and always download to it, not the HDD. Most likely a reformat will help you make a clean start, but I recommend getting a larger HDD as a better solution.

<font color=purple><b>An average human brain weights aprox. 3lbs., but a thought weights a load.</font color=purple></b>