I have a user's computer who she is no longer using but was asked to keep the machine for training purposes. I was to just wipe the disk clean of the work the user has done. After I have cleaned out the computer of the programs it won't need, and removed the user account, plus the user's profiles folder under Documents and Settings, the disk, which is about 10GB in size, should have only about 1 to 2 GB for the OS and some of the bare minimum programs. However, when I saw that the Free Space was only 4.4GB, I got suspicious. So I ran Windows Updates, Scandisk, Defrag, Disk Clean Up, emptied Norton Anti-Virus (CE) Quaranteen, deleted Temp Files/Cookies, nothing helped. I went to command prompt, went to the root directory and ran dir/s. It showed that the data should be only about 1.6GB. So where did the other 3 - 4 GB go and how do I recover them? Please help. Thanks.

Hidden files and folders? Empty recycle bin for all the accounts? multiple partitions with 1 not formatted? What did it say exact? whats in use, capacity, free space?

I've found the culprit. It was the pagefile. It seemed that it was set to 4GB of size, so once I lowered it, the space freed up. But thanks for the heads up on the system files, if it weren't for that mention, I wouldn't have suspected the protected system files setting (the one that is check-marked, not the radio buttoned one) under folder options/hidden files and the pagefile size. I appreciate the help.