I have an 80 gig Hard Drive with only 2 gigs in use. I used Privacy Guardian to bleach the free space. As indicated in the following quote from PG Tech. support my HD filled up with files that because the clean up didn't complete remained on drive. I found them on my C: drive and manually removed them but 56 gigs is still in use. Any idea how I can find what is using this space and remove it? "This action will ensure that the contents of any existing files will be modified with the unreadable data thus preventing users from viewing the original contents of the applicable files. If you select clean on the local C: drive, Privacy Guardian will temporarily fill up all free disk space with proprietary Privacy Guardian files to ensure that all free disk space is wiped clean of any data left on the file system". I ran FDISK to make sure I was on a single partition and I am but only 16 gigs is free. Yes I have asked PG tech.but no response as of yet. thank you

Why would you use such a "tool"?

Try running it from safe mode. Next time, use CCleaner. If you decide to install it, don't click thru the screens too quickly...the latest version installs Yahoo Toolbar by default. Watch for the screen where you can uncheck the box to prevent it from installing. The earlier versions didn't have it & I'm a little pissed that they've packaged it with the latest edition.

I run it several times a day...basically, everytime I get off the internet

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

I didn't realize how it worked. Claims it cleans out the hidden .dat files. Who knows, maybe it does.

so does ccleaner

So does my purge.bat, and RenMan's Delindex.bat, and Fred Langa's (of the LangaList Newsletter) CLEAN9X.BAT and SHOPVAC.BAT. All free. And clean. No leftover garbage.

It's a good day when you learn something

For some reason after I ran a counterspy and adaware deep scan all rogue folders were removed and my disk space was restored to me. Thanks to all for advice.

How those 'deleting deleted data' programs work is they fill your hard drive COMPLETELY full of files with random garbled junk in them, that do nothing at all. Then they delete those files, so if you try to use an undeleting program, the only stuff there to recover is the junk files, not your data.

I used Ace Utilities until my trial ran out (actually I used it after that ;) ). It has empty folder finding and other cool utils. Registry cleaner that works amazingly too.

thank you Sterkenburg I will give it a try.

:)

Hmm, apparently that isn't enough of a message to post.