PC help

[Jim in Anchorage]

My PC is set up as follows- "C" drive 20 GB,100% full. "D" 30 GB, only 7 used. "e" 40 GB, none used. The computer has become almost unusable. I get you are very low on memory messages, and cannot load a picture, much less a program.

It acts like the d+e drives don't exist.

Is there a way to get rid of these drive partitions? I really don't understand their purpose.

[Doc]

First of all, how many hard drives do you have? Since you're calling them partitions, I'll assume you have one 100GB hard drive partitioned into 3 drives.

 

Your "C" drive is likely/usually your system partition/drive. You can recover space by right-clicking on it, clicking on "properties," then clicking-on "disk cleanup" and checking-off things you want to delete.

 

What's likely happening is that everything you download is being saved on the "C" drive. In the future when you download things and it asks for a place to save it, click "browse" and put it on the "D" or "E" drives. And if you can find things to move from "C" to "D" or "E" you can also create more space. But you might need to reinstall some programs.

[BB27]

I am not a computer genius, but,

 

Memory and drive space are not the same thing. Memory is exactly that memory, and drive space is storage. I would probably try to clean up the drive and get rid of unwanted junk, or better yet go to www.newegg.com and buy a new harddrive with a lot more space (terabyte, 800gb, 500gb, etc). If you still have the disk of your current operating system, you can just instal that on the new drive (unless we're talking windows 95). Pretty easy to do even for someone with no computer skills. Google "how to instal new hard drive" and you should be in business.

 

That's what I would do.

[Jim in Anchorage]

Just one physical hard drive. And it never asks me where I want to put things. For example if I open a video it plays for a few seconds, then quits, and I get the low memory message.

[BB27]

Just one physical hard drive. And it never asks me where I want to put things. For example if I open a video it plays for a few seconds, then quits, and I get the low memory message.

 

Okay, you need more memory (RAM) not storage space, although it sounds as though your hard drive is kind of full.

 

How much RAM does your computer have? How old is your computer?

 

Google your computer model number and see what it can be upgraded to.

[Doc]

Just one physical hard drive. And it never asks me where I want to put things. For example if I open a video it plays for a few seconds, then quits, and I get the low memory message.

If you go to "Control Panel" and "System" and then "Administrative Tools," you can delete your "E" partition, since it has nothing on it. If you don't have anything important on the "D" partition, you can delete that as well.

 

Did you right-click on the "C" drive? Could you recover any space?

 

And by downloads, I meant downloading programs, which take up a lot of space. You can recover the space for videos from the "disk cleanup" I mentioned.

 

And BB is right. Disk drives are really cheap now. You can easily get an additional one with 500 GB for about $50.

[Doc]

Okay, you need more memory (RAM) not storage space, although it sounds as though your hard drive is kind of full.

 

How much RAM does your computer have? How old is your computer?

 

Google your computer model number and see what it can be upgraded to.

He may need more RAM, but it's mostly a storage problem since his "C" drive is full and videos are usually saved to the "C"/system drive.

[The Dean]

My PC is set up as follows- "C" drive 20 GB,100% full. "D" 30 GB, only 7 used. "e" 40 GB, none used. The computer has become almost unusable. I get you are very low on memory messages, and cannot load a picture, much less a program.

It acts like the d+e drives don't exist.

Is there a way to get rid of these drive partitions? I really don't understand their purpose.

 

Are you using XP? If so...

 

You can use something like Gparted to reconfigure your current partitions. Someone else may have a better program for you, but I think this works fine. Here's a guide:

 

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

 

Short of that, at least move as much as you can off the C drive and onto the D or E drives. That is, take all the music, pictures, documents, etc off of the C drive. I'm assuming all of your important operating system files are on the C drive. When it is that full it is very hard for the system to operate.

 

If you get low memory messages after that (I assume it is a low virtual memory message), you can reconfigure your paging file. There is a lot of disagreement about what the best size for a paging file should be (or even if you should have one) but I use the following as a rule of thumb. Set the minimum to 1.5 times the size of your RAM. You can leave the max the same as the minimum or set the max to 3 times the RAM.

 

Most of the above will work on Vista, too. But in Vista you should be able to repartition your drive w/o special software:

 

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-...11-6170510.html

[Jim in Anchorage]

Okay, you need more memory (RAM) not storage space, although it sounds as though your hard drive is kind of full.

 

How much RAM does your computer have? How old is your computer?

 

Google your computer model number and see what it can be upgraded to.

2006 HP. As I recall it had 512 something and 160 GB. It worked great-I was able to do video editing,etc no problem then the hard drive smoked[it was making noises like a stepped on cat] I had someone replace the HD with one supposedly equivalent to the original. That worked good for a while, then this showed up.

Maybe it was not set up properly?

[The Dean]

2006 HP. As I recall it had 512 something and 160 GB. It worked great-I was able to do video editing,etc no problem then the hard drive smoked[it was making noises like a stepped on cat] I had someone replace the HD with one supposedly equivalent to the original. That worked good for a while, then this this showed up.

Maybe it was not set up properly?

 

 

If it is an XP machine I recommend increasing the RAM, but that's not the issue here, IMO. Your drive was stupidly configured.

 

If it is a Vista machine, you have far too little RAM and it may be contributing to this problem (but your drive remains stupidly configured).

[The Dean]

One more thing. XP reserves 12% of the hard drive for System Restore by default. That's just stupid, IMO. System Restore needs a minimum of 200MB to operate, but should never have much over 1 GB, IMO. You can get some hard disk space by reducing the amount used for System Restore:

 

http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/...1212478,00.html

[Jim in Anchorage]

Are you using XP? If so...

You can use something like Gparted to reconfigure your current partitions. Someone else may have a better program for you, but I think this works fine. Here's a guide:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

 

Short of that, at least move as much as you can off the C drive and onto the D or E drives. That is, take all the music, pictures, documents, etc off of the C drive. I'm assuming all of your important operating system files are on the C drive. When it is that full it is very hard for the system to operate.

 

If you get low memory messages after that (I assume it is a low virtual memory message), you can reconfigure your paging file. There is a lot of disagreement about what the best size for a paging file should be (or even if you should have one) but I use the following as a rule of thumb. Set the minimum to 1.5 times the size of your RAM. You can leave the max the same as the minimum or set the max to 3 times the RAM.

 

Most of the above will work on Vista, too. But in Vista you should be able to repartition your drive w/o special software:

 

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-...11-6170510.html

But then do I need to reinstall Windows? It's XP professional.

[/dev/null]

One physical drive with 3 partitions of:

"C" drive 20 GB,100% full. "D" 30 GB, only 7 used. "e" 40 GB

 

20 + 30 + 40 = 90GB = Small Hard drive

 

Buy a second drive of 500GB+

 

Partition first drive as C with full drive space

Partition second drive as whatever letter you want with full drive space

 

90GB is plenty for XP/Vista to run OS files

 

Point your Profile/My Docs towards the second drive.

 

Windows can save whatever OS files it wants to C

You can save whatever porn files to your secondary drive

 

C won't fill up anytime soon

Watch secondary drive so it doesn't fill up with too much pr0n

[The Dean]

But then do I need to reinstall Windows? It's XP professional.

 

 

No, you shouldn't have to. If Gparted won't merge the partitions w/o destroying data, this program claims to do just that:

 

http://download.cnet.com/Easeus-Partition-...cdlPid=10982635

 

You really want C to be one drive. If it is really a 160 GB drive you have space that is unused. If it is all accounted for, you have a 90 GB drive, as /dev noted. And, if you really use your hard drive to store media, then I would invest in a larger drive as he recommends. But that's not your issue, right now. You have a big enough drive for what you currently have on your computer (even if it is only a 90 GB drive) if that drive wasn't divided into impossibly small partitions. You are only using 27 GB of that dive, according to your post.

[The Dean]

To check to see if there is space on your hard drive that is not assigned to a drive do the following.

 

Control Panel

Administrative Tools

Computer Management

 

Then click on Disk Management on the left hand side. It will show you the partitions, and any space that might not be assigned.

[DonInBuffalo]

Coincidentally, a small company I used to work for purchased an HP desktop in the summer of 2006. Someone else I do business with purchased one about a year or so before that.

 

The immediate problem you have is you don't have enough free space on your C partition. I suggest you delete all your temporary internet files, and change those settings to reduce the amount of space that is used for that.

 

Also, check your list of installed programs, and delete anything that's installed in the C partition that you don't need, or you can reinstall on another partition.

 

As a general rule, you want at least 10% free space on all drives/partitions at all times.

 

Since you have plenty of free disk space, if you want to spend a few coins to speed up the computer, RAM makes the most sense. You could upgrade to 2 Gig for about $50. If you go to HP's web site, you should be able to enter your model number somewhere in the support section and find out exactly what kind of memory your computer uses. Probably 2 memory sticks 1 Gig each, the kind that everybody sells, would work in that computer.

[Jim in Anchorage]

Wow, thanks for all the great help, all of you It will take some hours to work my way though all this.

[Doc]

Nothing should take you hours. Running disk cleanup on "C" (and even "D") should freeup several GB's, which will allow you to do whatever you need to do (seeing as how you've only used 27/90 GB's). And blowing-away your "E" partition will place it in the "C" partition and increase the size there. Even if you were to get a new hard drive or RAM, you can order them online.

[Jim in Anchorage]

I got as far as disk management which did show the drives. When I right clicked on D it never said anything about partitions but did have format. Is this what I am looking for?

[The Dean]

I got as far as disk management which did show the drives. When I right clicked on D it never said anything about partitions but did have format. Is this what I am looking for?

 

 

All that will tell you is what you have available to work with, should you use a program to repartition the hard drive. For example, here is a screen shot of my laptop's disk management page:

 

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5061/diskqw.jpg

 

My laptop has one physical drive, but is divided into two partitions. This shows that my C drive/partition is 99 GB and my D partition is 11.75 GB. As you can see, I also have a small amount of space (1 GB) that is not assigned to any drive letter. In my computer the D drive is a recovery drive. That contains the original setup and is to be used if I have to reformat the drive and reinstall. In my case, I leave the D drive alone, for that purpose.

 

We know you have at least three partitions, as you described in the 1st post. The only way you have a 160 GB drive is if you have a large amount of space that is not assigned to any drive letter.

 

In Vista, you could actually repartition your drive from this console. Unfortunately, you can't do that in XP. The programs I recommended earlier are used for that purpose. You need to merge the C drive with one, or both, of your other partitions and any large unused space if it is available.

 

As Doc notes, you may have to clear a little space on the C drive to simply get started. Moving or deleting pictures or music would help, A disk cleaning would help you get more space. (There are great free tools, like CCleaner for that, but you probably don't want to install more on the computer right now.) Reducing the System Restore usage will also help free up some space to make this a little more manageable.

 

If you are concerned about losing data, you might simply try to merge the space the E drive is using (40 GB) into the C drive. You will end up with a 60 GB C drive and since there is nothing in the E drive you should have no problems. But I think the software is capable of merging drives without impacting data, so I would go ahead and make one C drive of the all the available space (merge the D and E drives). It might take a while to perform that merge, but not hours, I don't believe.

 

Note: If your D drive is labeled as "Recovery" in Disk Management, leave it alone.