Windows ate my disk

[stolzy]

Now and then I am forced to run windows on my mac via VMWare. On Friday it complained that it was very low on disc space (there's a 5Gb bootcamp partition).

I cleared out everything I didn't need including old software, windows components, trash etc and found 600Mb.

3 days later I am getting the same 'critically low on disc space' messages. Now the disk only has 42Mb.

Since the last housekeeping no user data has been saved on the disk, so where has the 550Mb gone?

What else can I delete to sate Windows voracious appetite for disk space

 

[shugie]

Now and then I am forced to run windows on my mac via VMWare. On Friday it complained that it was very low on disc space (there's a 5Gb bootcamp partition).

I cleared out everything I didn't need including old software, windows components, trash etc and found 600Mb.

3 days later I am getting the same 'critically low on disc space' messages. Now the disk only has 42Mb.

Since the last housekeeping no user data has been saved on the disk, so where has the 550Mb gone?

What else can I delete to sate Windows voracious appetite for disk space

Might have been Windows downloading an update and doing a system restore point before installing it? I use CCleaner, free download from Piriform http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner to get rid of unwanted stuff, but as long as you are running Windows in a small disk you will get this sort of problem, it eats disk space.

 

[bowser]

Has it shut the windows instalation down for anyreason, if so you may have a memory dump and they eat up space, is it using a swap file and if so has the disk on which the swap file been filled up with somthing, either of those would cause the issue your looking at.

 

[stolzy]

Might have been Windows downloading an update and doing a system restore point before installing it? I use CCleaner, free download from Piriform http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner to get rid of unwanted stuff, but as long as you are running Windows in a small disk you will get this sort of problem, it eats disk space.

It doesn't have an internet connection, so its not an update download problem.

I don't see how it has eaten half a gigabyte in 3 days without any user data being saved.

Thanks for chipping in.

 

[stolzy]

Has it shut the windows installation down for any reason, if so you may have a memory dump and they eat up space, is it using a swap file and if so has the disk on which the swap file been filled up with somthing, either of those would cause the issue your looking at.

Its been stable for some weeks, nothing has been installed since the last time it was working.

It has a 2Gb swap file, which I have just reduced to 1 Gb - this gave me an extra 0.5Gb of disk space - what windows has done with the other 0.5Gb is anybodies guess!

Where would I dfind a memory dump, if there were one.

 

[shugie]

windirstat is a useful programme for hunting down large files

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

a 2GB swap file doesnt mean it was using 2GB just that it can. You can set the start size as well. my guess would be a restore point after you deleted stuff the last time. Turn system restore off (its fairly poor in XP anyway) and see if that helps. Your also a bit tight with 5GB by the time all the patches and stuff are on.