[Spicious]

Try http://windirstat.info/

[Beskargam]

ok so disk cleaner cleared about 5 gigs. ran ccleaner on both registry and c drive. didnt find all that much. running norton scan down and dowloading windir.stat thing. wow. my documents and settings folder on c drive is 70.5 gigs. . .is that normal? and i possibly might have lost free space overnite. not sure bout that one. writing it down for today

ok my sisters profile is by far the largest space eater at 35.7. scratch that the restore folder is largest at like 70 some and climbing. should the restore be that much?

[Rodo]

my documents and settings folder on c drive is 70.5 gigs. . .is that normal?

Probably not.

EDIT:
What? restore folder??

Have you ever used that thing anyway?, disable the service right now and delete the folder, it's of no use, aside from being a perfect place to save viruses and other useless data.

[Beskargam]

kay. what do i do then? broken down my sisters profile makes senses for a lotta music she has and the owners profile has another 30 for all the rest of our familys stuff. so i think that might be reasonable.

hmmmm the restore folder on the c drive is like 100.1 gigs. . ..that cant be normal. . .

[Beskargam]

and i have no idea if we used it. we had the computer wiped 2 months ago, reformatted and had  most of our stuff put back on but it wouldnt take that much. you sure i should delete it?

[Beskargam]

windirstat is amazing. all the space in documents and setting is from my sisters itunes movies and a lot of pictures we took aways back.

ok the conspicuiously gone space is being used for the restore folder on the c drive. using almost 100 gigs. can i delete that?

[Flipside]

Wait for someone who is certain to give a response before you do so, but as far as I can tell, if you don't ever use the System Restore to step the computer back when an update/driver doesn't work, then it's probably ok.

[Rodo]

System restore is useless, left click on my pc icon in the desktop, then properties, search for the system restore (or something like that) tab, then disable it.
It should remove all the restore points saved when doing so.

If you are really, REALLY sure you're gonna be using it a lot, then maybe it's got a degree of use, but for the regular user it's just wasted disc space.

[Flipside]

I've certainly never used it in my entire life, but, not wanting to show off, with 3TB of disc space, I've never really needed to concern myself with the room it takes up either

[Beskargam]

ya weve never used it and its takin up a ton of space. deleted it. annddd that seems to have solved my space issue. btw thx for the WinDirStat amazingly useful tool. and thx for all the advice and help you guys gave

[Rodo]

We at HLP are always glad to introduce new people into freespace

[Nuke]

ok so disk cleaner cleared about 5 gigs. ran ccleaner on both registry and c drive. didnt find all that much. running norton scan down and dowloading windir.stat thing. wow. my documents and settings folder on c drive is 70.5 gigs. . .is that normal? and i possibly might have lost free space overnite. not sure bout that one. writing it down for today

ok my sisters profile is by far the largest space eater at 35.7. scratch that the restore folder is largest at like 70 some and climbing. should the restore be that much?

theres yer problem, you let your sister use your computer. never ever let anyone use your computer, ever, especially someone of the female persuasion.

[Flipside]

Actually, one of the most competent students in my Uni class was a girl. It's not really to do with gender, just experience and knowledge.

I think the problem here is more likely the fact that it seems no-one in the house has computer knowledge beyond the general level, I'm certainly not knocking anyone for that, but it always helps to have someone who knows a bit about what's 'under the hood' as it were. Like any tool, knowledge of its details can vastly improve the quality of the output

[Nuke]

well i speak from expirience. my sister destroys electronics routinely. i tell her to bring me her junkified electronics so i can scrap parts from them, and she brings me something every other week for me to take apart.

[LHN91]

In general, if I know that someone who is a 'general purpose' (read: facebook, msn, youtube, music) computer user is going to use a system, I try to make it as "idiot-proof" as possible. Chrome installed, IE hidden, Adblock installed to keep them from clicking on any ads. Limited account if possible. It seems to work pretty well.

My girlfriend is slowly learning how to not destroy her computer. All she uses is stuff like skype, msn, facebook, and web browsing; and I haven't had to fix her system in quite a bit. However, it likely helps that I set up an old Pentium 3 laptop with Lubuntu for when her friends are around. Limited account, Chrome/Midori and emesene, all labeled as Internet and MSN. They can hardly tell the difference. And with the limited account, it's nearly impossible to kill.

[Fury]

System restore is not useless. Far from it.

If you set it to remember both system settings and files and moderate its use of hard drive space, you can restore contents of any folder stored on hard drive that has system restore enabled. For example, you just accidentally deleted a folder that was full of important files. No problem, create new folder of same name, right click on it, select properties and previous version, now you can restore lost contents. I had that happen once, I was rather pissed off until I remembered I had this enabled and it really saved the day.

The key here is to moderate disk space usage of system restore. Setting it to something like 5% of total hard disk space can be extremely useful one day. It's like those airbags in a car, they're useless too except for the split second they're needed to avoid fatal injury.

[LHN91]

If i remember correctly, System restore on XP gives you an estimate of how many restore points that a given percentage setting will give you. Set it so that you have space for 1 or 2 restore points, and that should be plenty. I seem to remember that at one point I had it set to something like 3%, just enough for one restore point.

Admittedly, I may be wrong on that one. My regular use systems are Windows 7 or Linux Mint. XP is only really on my old backup laptop and a couple of P4's i keep around because I hate throwing working systems away.

[Bobboau]

system restore is the bane of every virus that doesn't wipe out all restore points.

[Nuke]

i only create one after installing the system, service packs and drivers and maybe a virus scanner (and before anything is allowed to do any online updates). i would say it would be better to ghost the system partition at this point and keep the image on file. this works especially well if you keep data on an entirely different partition/drive.

[jr2]

they whore space. i set moms computer up 2 years ago with windows xp a virus scanner, firefox and not a whole lot else. the os, and virus scanner were on automatic update, firefox and plugins (flash,java) updates were done. it used up roughly a quarter of a 20gb hard drive when i was finished with it. last week i did some overdue maintanence and the hard drive was full. i managed to get usage down to half so i could defrag the drive. i notice the same kind of thing on my computer, where i dont put any files of mine on the system partition. i metered internet usage last time i reinstalled an os. i had to download about 2 gigs of stuff to get it working. drivers, service packs, etc.

i have to meter my throughput here because we got capped internet. and i find that "updates" is a big slice out of that. all this data has to go somewhere. update clients are annoying, especially when you have to update them.

www.driverpacks.net

www.autopatcher.com

Also, you can slipstream your service packs into your OS...

EDIT: Also, depending on the size of the drive, I set the system restore size as close to 1 Gigabyte as I can get.  Usually, that makes 1%-3%... 1% of 232 GB is 2.32 GB, so I'd set it at 1%.  Really, how much space does a restore need?  To back up modified files shouldn't take more than a few hundred megabytes, maybe half a gig or more if you're installing a service pack!  IIRC Restore Points don't clone your entire windows and programs, only the parts that are modified.