Help me defrag Windows 2000

My wife's PC is running out of room fast. (Windows 2000 Pro) Every time I delete stuff it doesn't help. Last night I had 1.2 gig of space, removed some files and ended up with 588mb space. What the ????

So I decided to defrag. When the window comes up it analyzes and show a lot of red. So I tell it to defrag and 2 minutes later it says it's done and it couldn't defrag anything.

I'm running into a brick wall here. My PC knowledge is only so much and I've used it all. I've uninstalled programs, I've ran disk cleanup, defrag and I'm not gaining harddrive space.

I think the problem is the drive needs to be defraged only the system is giving me issues.

What can I do? Any help would be great.

Thanks

 

A defrag will not fix your problem. Most likely what is going on is that you have some sort of program that is logging activity and it's log files have become so huge that they are taking over the hardrive.

I have personally fixed this issue for a client's home computer. In that case, her ZoneAlarm firewall logs were 10 gigabytes big!

You should try right clicking on your main folders like the c:\winnt, and your user profile folder under c:\document and settings\userxxxx, and choose properties. Windows should take a few gigabytes, but anything over 6 is pretty large.

You can also try the Diskcleanup feature, just right click on your hard drive C icon and choose Properties and DiskCleanup. This will take forever! But it will usually delete some temp files for you.

 

See if this is of any use to you:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/maintain/optimize/w2kexec.mspx

If it were me I would go through and delete all of the temporary internet files and anything else that can safely be removed. If possible, shift some files onto an external hard drive or burn them onto cd / dvd. Check the discs are ok and then delete the stuff from the computer's HD to free up some space.

Next thing would be to run the Harddrive error check (MyComputer > right-click on the HDD > Properties > Tools Tab). Set it to run when you reboot. Then reboot the computer and leave the error checker to do its thing. Make sure it's set to automatically fix any errors.

Once that's all finished, run the defrag. If it still won't defrag, you may have to go through all of the programs running on your machine (Ctrl + Alt + Del to list them). Close down everything you can, including antivirus and firewalls (disconnect from the internet before you do this) and then try defrag again.

Reboot.

 

DiskCleanup has been run like 5 times. I'll look for those files you suggested but how will i know them when I see them? Will they say file.log?

 

I've been deleting A LOT of stuff and gaining no space. There is no external drive that I can access.

I'll try that. Thanks

Defraging works, it just doesn't do much of anything. It skips most of the files and is done in only a few minutes. But I'll work though what you suggested.

Thanks

 

You can also use Search. Go to Start - Search - For Files and Folders and click Search Options, choose Size and put in something like 102400KB, which is a 100 megabytes. This will give you a list of files over 100 megabytes.

As to why you are running out of space.... your pagefile takes up space and that expands as you load more programs, rebooting should reset the page file, so on reboot you should have your space back. But if you are maxing out the hard drive, you need to remove more files so at least 10% to 30% is available and free.

 

Thanks I was wondering how to do this on a PC.

It shuts down every night so this pagefile thing should get reset often.

 

Run a search by "date modified" and just search today's date. Don't put anything in the search box (leave blank), after the search, click on the "size" column and it will put the files in order of size, maybe you can see the culprit.

 

Make sure you *Emptied the Recycle Bin* then Delete any & all files in the Windows\Temp Folder and try running Chkdsk first then run defrag in *Safe Mode*..

 

Thanks for all the ideas. This, and a few other issues on the PC, made us decided to get a new computer. So we got an iMac. Much better and zero problems.