Hard drive full?????

[KILTIECAULDBUM]

Help anyone!!!
I have an HP Pavillion W5151uk. It has a 160gb hard drive & a 160gb personal media drive (320gb total).
Yesterday out of the blue I got a pop-up message saying that my 'C' drive was almost full!!
I clicked on my computer, right clicked on 'C' drive, then properties, tools, defragment & analyse. It shows I only have 5% free space (out of 143gb). That is after I have taken off a few programmes, emptied all my mail box, & the recycle bin etc. It won't defrag. because it says it needs a minimum of 15% free space. I also noticed that after clicking on my computer, the 'C' drive & the 'Documents' folder font is in BLUE? All other fonts on that screen are BLACK!! If I double click on the 'C' drive most of the folder options are also in a blue font. I never changed the colour?
I have tried the disc clean-up, defrag, error check, but it doesn't make any difference. I also have a personal media drive (149gb). It has a few programmes on it etc. but it shows 99% free space?
Maybe the drive is corrupted or something, I don't know.
Thanks if you can help.

[Oddquine]

Help anyone!!!
I have an HP Pavillion W5151uk. It has a 160gb hard drive & a 160gb personal media drive (320gb total).
Yesterday out of the blue I got a pop-up message saying that my 'C' drive was almost full!!
I clicked on my computer, right clicked on 'C' drive, then properties, tools, defragment & analyse. It shows I only have 5% free space (out of 143gb). That is after I have taken off a few programmes, emptied all my mail box, & the recycle bin etc. It won't defrag. because it says it needs a minimum of 15% free space. I also noticed that after clicking on my computer, the 'C' drive & the 'Documents' folder font is in BLUE? All other fonts on that screen are BLACK!! If I double click on the 'C' drive most of the folder options are also in a blue font. I never changed the colour?
I have tried the disc clean-up, defrag, error check, but it doesn't make any difference. I also have a personal media drive (149gb). It has a few programmes on it etc. but it shows 99% free space?
Maybe the drive is corrupted or something, I don't know.
Thanks if you can help.

On my PC the files in blue are hidden and compressed ones like the uninstall progs for downloaded windows upgrades, but I usually delete them anyway when the download hasn't crashed my PC after a few days.

Are you the only user...............because if not, other users will also have a load of temp files, internet temp files etc.

And if you have a lot of graphics or music, that fairly eats up space.
Why not archive old my document stuff to your other hard drive.

[KILTIECAULDBUM]

Hi.
I am the only user on this pc. I have already deleted temp. internet files & all but the most recent system restore files too.
This all just seemed to happen all of a sudden. The defrag. details do show a lot of red Fragmented files, but there is not enough free space to run the defrag tool!!
I was backing up some dvds all last week. I had the software set to delete the temp. files after each back-up was complete. Maybe that hasn't worked & all these temp files are lurking somewhere? but I can't find them.

[fred]

Help anyone!!!
I have an HP Pavillion W5151uk. It has a 160gb hard drive & a 160gb personal media drive (320gb total).
Yesterday out of the blue I got a pop-up message saying that my 'C' drive was almost full!!
I clicked on my computer, right clicked on 'C' drive, then properties, tools, defragment & analyse. It shows I only have 5% free space (out of 143gb). That is after I have taken off a few programmes, emptied all my mail box, & the recycle bin etc. It won't defrag. because it says it needs a minimum of 15% free space. I also noticed that after clicking on my computer, the 'C' drive & the 'Documents' folder font is in BLUE? All other fonts on that screen are BLACK!! If I double click on the 'C' drive most of the folder options are also in a blue font. I never changed the colour?
I have tried the disc clean-up, defrag, error check, but it doesn't make any difference. I also have a personal media drive (149gb). It has a few programmes on it etc. but it shows 99% free space?
Maybe the drive is corrupted or something, I don't know.
Thanks if you can help.

Left click on Start, click on "Explore all users" or whatever it is in XP, left click on each of the folders on C drive, click on properties and it will tell you how much space that folder is taking up. Find the folder which is taking up most space then open it and do the same with each of the sub folders. Keep on doing this till you find the file or folder which is causing the problem.

[Bobinovich]

I'd go into whatever software you were using for the DVDs and find out where its temporary folder is - then go and check it out 'cos my money says that's probably where the offending files are.

[Praetorian]

"I also noticed that after clicking on my computer, the 'C' drive & the 'Documents' folder font is in BLUE? "


This means that it is the last folder to be opened/modified. Left Click Start/search all file and folders. what size was it and put in 1 meg. This will list all files over 1 meg including *.tmp files.

[Mr_Me19]

"I also noticed that after clicking on my computer, the 'C' drive & the 'Documents' folder font is in BLUE? "


This means that it is the last folder to be opened/modified. Left Click Start/search all file and folders. what size was it and put in 1 meg. This will list all files over 1 meg including *.tmp files.

No it means that the file, or folder as it is in this case, has been compressed.