Greetings to all! I have a problem with a laptop. It has a hard drive of 30GB and recently it has become progressively slower (to an annoying point). If I check the size of all the files and folders, it's about 8GB but then the if I check the properties of the only partition C: it states that the free space is only 7GB. Shouldn't it be something close to (30-8)=22GB free space? I thought 'virus' so I checked panda's online scan which I think is very good and it didn't catch anything apart from 2 simple adwares which I then deleted. The problem persists.. I suspect the slowness of the system has something to do with this free space problem.. Any help would be very appreciated! Regards, Nuno Benavente

Try Scanner from http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ Recycle Bin, hiberfil.sys (if hibernation is enabled), and pagefile.sys (virtual memory) can all take up space. There could still also be a hidden HP recovery partition taking up 2 GB or so. Defragment and maybe clear out System Restore points.

"If I check the size of all the files and folders, it's about 8GB but then the if I check the properties of the only partition C: it states that the free space is only 7GB.Shouldn't it be something close to (30-8)=22GB free space?" Thgere's probaly nothing wrong - you're just interpretting it the wrong way. If you select all files, if the list includes folders, you have to RIGHT click, then select Properties to see the true picture - otherwise the files and and the files in any subfolders within those folders are not included in the total size. As far as the total free space being reported differently depending on the method you use, there's nothing unusual about that. See response 3 in this: http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/... And in addition, hard drive manufacturers always specify the bogus decimal size for a hard drive (e.g. 1 gb = 1,000,000,000 bytes)- your mboard bios and Windows see the drive as it's binary size (e.g. 1gb = 1,024 bytes per kb X 1,024 kb per mb X 1,024 mb per gb = 1,073,741,824 bytes), plus Windows uses some hard drive space for partitions and formatting that then becomes not available for data, so the total available hard drive size is always less than the manufacturer's size. If there is only one partition on the hard drive, the available partition size is the same as the available hard drive size in Windows.

Use disk clean up first. I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you goober.

Thanks for your replies! Tubesandwires, I checked the size correctly (by right clicking,etc) and I think the difference has nothing to do with the rounded bogus sizes.. it's a 22GB difference! Cyberslug, I tried almost everything you mentioned (by the way, nice scanner there!very cool, thanks!) and nothing worked. I forgot to mention an error about the pagefile not being created when windows starts up. But today the owner of the PC said it has 1GB RAM BUT windows only 'sees' 512MB, so I guess something's very wrong with the RAM. Tomorrow I will check it up and maybe it's that what's causing the trouble.. Thank you again guys!

Okay, in that case, your problem is the computer itself is seeing only an 8.4gb drive. You've either got - an old computer that has an old bios version that can't recognize any hard drive larger than 8.4 gb (in the bios and Windows) because of bugs in the bios code, - or you have your hard drive detection settings in your bios Setup set to LARGE instead of LBA (if the computer is new enough Auto will also set the detection to LBA), - or there is a hard drive size limitation jumper installed on the hard drive that limits what the computer bios can see to 8.4gb. If the hard drive is set to master and requires a jumper for master, in that case you would see it has two jumpers installed instead of one. See the label on the drive, or the jumper information for that model drive on the drive manufacturer's web site. The model is often stated in Device Manager and/or on the first screen as you boot the computer - if it isn't you'll have to look at the label on the drive to find it. The exact model of HP laptop you have, and it's product number, would be helpful - the ones on a label on the computer.