Got this wierd problem. Through my network I tried to copy a 12GB AVI file from my desktop to my laptop which has 24GB of space available but I keep getting the same message" insufficient space on target drive" I'm not really sure whether this is an XP problem or related to the fact it is an AVI file. Any ideas? Bob Mitchell.

You may be able to get more info from the Event viewer. HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;308427

Do you have a program that is reserving empty space? Are you on a FAT32 system or NTFS? (Fat32 has a 4 gig limit) File indexing and system restore not only reserve space but they are both huge space hogs. If they are on and you don't need them, then turn them off. Is your recycle bin empty? Recycle kills a file location but does not kill the file until emptied. As a result space reports can be conflicting.

Interesting post, blackbill. I always turn off system restore on all but the system partition. When I got the error initially I ran Treesize and deleted a very large folder to give me double the space I thought I needed, I even ran defrag & it showed everything at the bottom end of the partition with 24GB space available in a contigous space. when I get home tonight I am going to try and back the file up to an external drive and see if I can move it that way, I'll let you know. JohnW, there is no system error so no entry in the Event log. Thank You, Bob Mitchell.

Blackbill, thanks for that, I have just realised that my extended partitions are FAT32 so tonight I will have to convert them. Regards. Bob Bob Mitchell.

Nice work blackbill