Yeah, forgot to mention that it's free...lol

also check your pagefile, if your page file is managed by windows, then it is possible high activity would cause it to grow in size. Loosing 100GB is to much to use up with general usage.

Suggestion...
1.) clean all temp files and recycle bin, basically run a clean disk utility.

2.) uninstall any software that is unknown and uneeded (make sure the software you uninstall is not system necessary)

3.) defrag the drive with a good defragger, windows defragger sucks, my suggestion is O&O Defrag Professional or Perfect Disk or Diskeeper. all of these are faster than the Windows defragger and they do a better job. (also auto defrag and other features)

Some harddrive clean ulities have a free space cleaner as well. It overwirites the unused portion of the harddrive to make sure that the files not logged on the MBR are indeed empty.

If all else fails you may want to try repairing the MBR (Master Boot Record), it could be reading an error which may cause your space to be lost. If nothing else worksas a last and final resort is to back up your important data and reinstall windows. This is a gaurantee fix for these issues assuming that that problem isnt hardware related.

Keep us informed... plenty of people here to help.

Is this a Lenovo you're having the problem with?

No it's from dell...Have had good luck with them in the past so I stuck with them..It's says 179gb now...

Hey Richard, I did the web search thing, like I'm sure you did. What operation sys are you running? Did you run any Video programs that maybe didn't shut down properly? There's a whole lot of things that show up searching Missing HDD space.

One of the things that is suggested is to contact the manufactruer of the the drive. From what I read usually they have utilities that you can run to check your disk. Not sure what would be different from what you may have already run.

Vista ..Don't use any video programs other than windows media player.I'll check it out, thanks...

Assuming Vista has the same 'System Restore' feature as XP ...then I'd be blaming that for pinching space...

Vista takes up a huge amount of space. I did the upgrade version of Vista Home Basic on my fathers computer and with just bare minimun of XP Home and then the upgrade of Vista Home basic, it took every bit of the 40Gb harddrive he has. I ended up getting the Vista off his computer. Vista is huge. But 100GB for system restore? I think is uses about 10% maybe 20 but thats pushing it.

But then again it all adds up... It won't take long for a few programs we think as minor to add up to a large amount of space

The guy at dell says the hard drive is alright do a virus scan..Is that possible it's just a virus?

Now it's down to 178gb's. I haven't done anything...

Richard, you started out saying that you were down to 180gb, then 179gb, and now 178gb. Somethings has to be writing to the HDD, is there anyway to see what is accessing the drive and possible saving data? Could it be a virus? Maybe another search of the web is in order looking for such a virus. That really doesn't make alot of sense, you not a newbee here. I find it extremely hard you would have pickup a virus, unless it came with the computer. Does Dell preloaded alot of junk programs that could be the culpret?

I got rid of all the stuff they put on. How would you see what's accessing the drive?

I knew I needed an answer for that question..........I wonder if task manager will show it. Vista still have that?

Go to system restore for the drive and disable it!

Right click the computer and go properties and go system protection and uncheck the drive it is making restore points on. Then if you still want it back on - do a restart and go back and check the box so it will start over. If your not gona use system restore - then just leave it unchecked. The restore system for Vista make whatt is called volume shadow copy everytime you create a restore point. A shadow copy can be very large depending on what all is installed on your computer. If you do not want shadow copy - uncheck the drive that it is protecting with system restore and restart. Then the drive will revert back to just what programs and OS is installed on it.

Good luck

SGT  

Thanks.. The shadow copy is taking up 47gb's or something like that...  Maybe that was the problem or maybe not a problem afterall...Thanks everyone..

All right then, now you can go get some sleep!