Reformat Hard drive Vista (somethings eaten my hard drive)

middlearthimages

middlearthimages

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Hi All,

I freed up 5 gb yesterday and already its eaten almost 4gb of this. I now think my best option is to reformat the computer.

I have just backed up my files using windows back up onto my external hard drive. Can anybody tell me how to reformat hard disc and what will I need. I know Vista uses a partition too.

Thanks,

John
 
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Make a backup of all your documents, email etc make sure you have all the install discs needed to replace your programs along with serial numbers and activation keys. Once you are happy you have everything backed up power put your windows CD into the cd drive and reboot, it should boot from the Windows CD follow the instructions from there at some point it will ask if you want to reformat your c: drive just click OK.

Desperate measures indeed
 
As Bucketp said but sometimes certain manufacturers do not supply windows CD or recovery CD with their PC's. They sometimes have a recovery partition that will reset the PC back to factory defaults, available usually by combinations of Fkey presses. It might be worth googling you PC make and model to see if it indeed has one. Far simpler for the inexperienced.
 
Does vista support the extended task manager as in Win 7. You can see what process is writing to disk. To start it, right click the taskbar, select "Start Task Manager", then click the performance tab and click the resource monitor button. Select the disk activity page and you'll see what is writing to disk.

Solving the problem at source is far easier than reformatting...
 
Is this PC part of a network?

Are you sharing files back and forth with this PC and another PC or external hard drive?

Have you checked your shared folder is empty?
 
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arad85 said:
Does vista support the extended task manager as in Win 7. You can see what process is writing to disk. To start it, right click the taskbar, select "Start Task Manager", then click the performance tab and click the resource monitor button. Select the disk activity page and you'll see what is writing to disk.

Solving the problem at source is far easier than reformatting...
Click to expand...

Yes got those open but what am i looking for?

Thanks
 
middlearthimages said:
Yes got those open but what am i looking for?

Thanks
Click to expand...
In the "processes with disk activity" tab, what's writing to disk (you can sort by each column by clicking on it)? When you've sussed that out, look at the "Disk Activity" tab and it will tell you which files are being written so you can see where your disk space is going.
 
I can understand you getting fed up with this and wanting it sorted, but unless

the PC has a nasty which is doing this, or
you have accidentally asked Vista to do something that has this effect,

reformatting is no guarantee it will not happen again.

I don't think it is a nasty, but make sure your security is up to date and run them, or do an online scan - FSecure is free.

I think there is some Vista process doing this, but I can't think what it is. I have one Vista laptop which is used a lot and have not seen anything like this.

Just Googled for info - haven't gone through the hits but there are lots

Dave
 
Ok,

As of yet I have not yet changed the shadow storage space. I did last night download CCleaner and it got me back very little. I turn it off last night with 1.72gb left on drive C.

I started up this morning to still having 1.72gb on Cdrive.

But when I checked again about 1 hour later my C drive has suddenly got 7.25 gb.I.ve done nothing.

So I will do nothing more and keep an eye on the 7.25gb and see if it starts to eat again or I get more back.

John
 
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