XP Home install using 4.9 gb ??

[padehu]

hi all,

just reinstalled XP Home onto my laptop - have done many times in the past but this time the install and uprages from MS (SP1 etc) are taking up 4.9 GB of the C: drive.... does anyone know why ?

when i highlight and click on all the contents of the C: drive they all add up to 1.6 GB so there is 3.3 GB somewhere ??

the drive is a partitioned 20GB - @ 6.5 & 13.5

have the usual programs on - Norton, Word, Excel, Paintshop Pro & PowerDVD nothing too big or resource hungry

any help or advice greatly appreciated


ps, new forums looking real sharp - well done mods :wavey:

[Zac]

Are you looking at the hidden files on C:? Did this happen immediately after the reinstall or when you started to install programs?

[Neo]

Delete your temp files, especially logs.

[PhilEnfield]

Did you do a clean install or how did you install ? ...... couldn't be a restore disk could it ?

[padehu]

directly after the re-install i deleted a load of unnessesary (?) compaq stuff - this usually frees up about 1gb - but i didn't actually note the size of the free space

this is all files on c: including hidden files - system restore also turned off on all drives

temp files and log files add up to @ 40gb

the only other thing i noticed was that the upgrades from MS did seem to take quite a while @ 2 hours to download and install

thanks for the input guys :)

[padehu]

sorry phil, didn't see your post...

yep its a recovery disc - from compaq
this is why i delete all the usual unwanted stuff
would a recovery disc make much difference?

i can always do a clean install - 1gb of free space ain't a lot to work with

[Nuttapper]

has the recycle bin had the protection taken off? (norton)

[padehu]

found out what was doing this - well a good enough workaround for me anyway :)

the paging file was automatically setting a default size of 1138 mb for both partitions (2276mb reserved) don't know why it would be so high - the laptop does have 752mb ram installed so maybe this has something to do with it - i have now set custom size of 250 - 300mb

so i now have 4.14 GB free i'm happy again :)

thanks to all who replied

[BlackDiamondJr]

The paging file as well as System Restore will consume quite a bit of space.
It is not a very good idea to set your paging file so low unless you have about 1 GB of RAM, and even then it's questionable. You system performance can be degraded.

[PhilEnfield]

Always the simple things eh ? ;)

I believe, by default, XP creates the pagefile.sys file at 1.5 times installed RAM.
Didn't know it did that for each partition though ...... I will have to remember that :)