There are a lot of cases when your system runs out of free space on the hard drive, but due to your low budget you can’t afford an upgrade. There are some things that may help in that case. Talking in generals there are not so much major consumers of free disk space. They more often are temporary internet files, history, system restore files and of course all that useless but funny multimedia on your PC.

Software means

There are a lot of ways to free up some disk space. First one is when the disk cleanup utility is used. It may help you when you need to empty temporary internet files folder, remove downloaded program files, windows temporary files and recycle bin. To run this “Disk Cleanup” utility click “Start” then click “Run”. In the Open box, type “cleanmgr” and after that click “OK”. These actions could clean up most of the disk space.

Manual means

Another way for cleaning your hard drive is raw deletion of useless data (is done manually). In that case you should surf your PC in order to find videos you have already watched, music that you are not listening, old photos you do not need any more.

I have noticed a lot of people using Microsoft built-in music CD burners. Windows media player converts tracks from audio compact disks into *.WMA (windows media audio) format. It is ok wit the quality but it is not with the size. WMA files are about 5-10 times bigger then mp3 music files. So it is obvious that you may save or free up the disk space by converting all WMAs on your hard drive to MP3s. You can watch your music file format by right clicking on it and selecting “properties” menu.

I want to add that you can do all the things that disk cleanup utility does manually. First of all delete all windows generated temporary files. They are usually placed in your \windows\temp folder and your profile folder in C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Local Settings\Temp.

Note that Local Settings folder is hidden by default, so don’t get confused if you won’t see it.

Temporary internet files of your profile you can also find there in “Local Settings” folder, but be careful with the deleting of temporary internet files and cookies all stored passwords for internet accounts (e-mails, forums, blogs, etc) will be lost.

Windows XP has an also “System Restore” files - the old restore points that have been saved when new hardware was installed. If your system is stable then you should clean them up (each disk drive has hidden directory called “system volume information”). Of course do not forget to empty your Recycle Bin regularly. If you are not doing this, there is an option of setting the size of the bin to a smaller value (just right-click on the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop and select Properties).

Remember to hold “shift” key along the “delete” button when deleting files from the Explorer. Doing so will permanently delete files without putting them into Recycle Bin.  Also you may delete all files in the root directory starting with “file???.chk” and all files beginning with the tilde (“~”).

And finally after all the deletions just run “Defrag” to improve disk performance.

However you can face some problems while defragmenting your hard drives. First of all it could simply hang.  In that case ensure that your anti-virus and other programs are turned off during the defragmentation process. You can find and shut them down using windows Task Manager.

Most bothersome programs that interrupt the defragmenter can be found in the System Tray, usually it is the group of icons at the bottom right of your screen, by the clock. Right click on them and select "close" or "exit".