O.T. Computer Cleaning Maintenance:

I have a Dell XPS 8500, with Windows 7 Professional, SP1,
with Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware, Avast, Malwarebytes,
Malwarebyte AntiExploit, Windows Defender and Windows
firewall. .

(1) TB HD
Intel (R) Core (TM) i7-33-3770 CPU @ 3.40 GHz 3.40 GHz
Ram 12.0 GB
System type : 64-bit operating system

I also have

I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with XP, SP3,
with Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware, Avast, Malwarebytes,
Windows Defender and Windows firewall.

Seagate Barracuda 7200 160 Gb HD
Intel (R) Pentium (R) 4 CPU 1.80 GHz
Ram 1.79 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM
System type : 32-bit operating system

and a

Seagate Backup Plus 1TB 2.5" USB 3.0 external HD (for both
computers)


I've noticed I've used allot of my HD on the 8500 (317 GB)
and while that still leaves 589 GB free it still concerns me.

Whereas on the 8200 I have 27.6 Used and 100GB free. (its
main purpose is a backup to the 8500)

I've run disk cleaner and defragmenter on both computers and have
been thinking of going through and deleting unnecessary files/folders
but would CcCleaner but good to use also for deleting unwanted programs
and files? I have no idea about the settings though?

Any other advice would be appreciated. I realize that at some point I'll
need to invest in an external HD to transfer/store files to keep the 8500
as clean as possible.

Thanks
Robert

In passing, some of you may have noticed
that I put a 160GB HD and then lower down
I noted its usage as 27.6 Used and 100GB free,
giving a total of 127GB.

A tech friend explained that when the
8200 was built they didn't envision 160GB
hard drives then so when I upgraded it with
the Seagate 160GB HD it truncated it to
127GB.

That's how he explained it to me.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I have a Dell XPS 8500, with Windows 7 Professional, SP1,
with Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware, Avast, Malwarebytes,
Malwarebyte AntiExploit, Windows Defender and Windows
firewall. .

(1) TB HD
Intel (R) Core (TM) i7-33-3770 CPU @ 3.40 GHz 3.40 GHz
Ram 12.0 GB
System type : 64-bit operating system

I also have

I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with XP, SP3,
with Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware, Avast, Malwarebytes,
Windows Defender and Windows firewall.

Seagate Barracuda 7200 160 Gb HD
Intel (R) Pentium (R) 4 CPU 1.80 GHz
Ram 1.79 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM
System type : 32-bit operating system

and a

Seagate Backup Plus 1TB 2.5" USB 3.0 external HD (for both
computers)


I've noticed I've used allot of my HD on the 8500 (317 GB)
and while that still leaves 589 GB free it still concerns me.

Whereas on the 8200 I have 27.6 Used and 100GB free. (its
main purpose is a backup to the 8500)

I've run disk cleaner and defragmenter on both computers and have
been thinking of going through and deleting unnecessary files/folders
but would CcCleaner but good to use also for deleting unwanted programs
and files? I have no idea about the settings though?

Any other advice would be appreciated. I realize that at some point I'll
need to invest in an external HD to transfer/store files to keep the 8500
as clean as possible.

Thanks
Robert

You can use WinDirStat to visually identify large files. If you
click on them, you can get "Properties".

This is the download site.

http://www.fosshub.com/WinDirStat.html

The download page looks like this. You have to scroll down a bit
to see the actual project data. The Download link is just that
four word phrase, and isn't in a larger font or anything.

WinDirStat

This software runs on Microsoft Windows XP Vista 7 and 8

Download WinDirStat Windows Installer - 630.59 KB | version: 1.1.2 | Screenshot | MD5/SHA1
--------

I cannot directly link to the file, which is why I have
to draw you a little picture. There is an advertisement right
underneath the Download link. They don't allow direct linking, so you'll
have to look at the advertisement underneath the Download link.

windirstat1_1_2_setup.exe
645,729 bytes
MD5sum = 3abf1c149873e25d4e266225fbf37cbf
SHA1sum = 6fa92dd2ca691c11dfbfc0a239e34369897a7fab

The information site is here. And basically this is just another
version of SequoiaView (a university project).

http://windirstat.info/

If there are any obviously big files, the size of the colored rectangle
will stand out. And the lines of text above the diagram, also give
a strong hint as to what is eating the space.

Paul

Mark Twain wrote:
In passing, some of you may have noticed
that I put a 160GB HD and then lower down
I noted its usage as 27.6 Used and 100GB free,
giving a total of 127GB.

A tech friend explained that when the
8200 was built they didn't envision 160GB
hard drives then so when I upgraded it with
the Seagate 160GB HD it truncated it to
127GB.

That's how he explained it to me.

Robert

The OS did the truncation for safety. The
hardware might not have provided any advice
at the time.

You can get some information from this
archived article.

http://web.archive.org/web/200701210...c/tp/137gb.pdf

At the time, this KB article was referenced, but
the originally written article wasn't all that
good. The current version is a bit better, but
still leaves a lot to the imagination. The reason
for setting this registry setting, is to give the
OS permission to make partitions outside the allowed
space.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

What's interesting about the problem, is that
not all disk interface types are affected. You'll
notice that your 1TB USB drive didn't break, and
it doesn't have that issue. If the 8200 had a
SCSI interface (my first computer had one of those),
that's a different cabling standard than IDE, and
it is also transparent to the issue. The SCSI
standard kept evolving to support larger and
larger CDB (command/data block formats).

What I can tell you, is the "127GB" state your
160GB drive is in right now, is "perfectly safe".
No harm can come to you. If you attempted to harvest
the extra space on the disk (and I think it *is*
possible to do it), you have to be careful to never
put WinXP Gold ancient OS version back on the thing
as your C:. As then the extended disk can become
corrupted.

I ran a Win2K box that way for about a year. I ran
the box in "dangerous" mode, and every time I did
something OS related, fooled around with disk partitioning,
I had to carefully review the rules for dealing
with that issue. And I managed to get through a year
of that, without breaking anything :-)

You have sufficient materials on hand, to do all the
necessary experiments (safely). Why ? Because you
have your backup drive, your Macrium boot CD, and you
can keep a copy of the 8200 hard drive, safely tucked
away for emergencies. So you can attempt to do all the
necessary work, to get a few more GB of space. I only
recommend this if you're bored, and need a project :-)

Paul

Il giorno Tue 07 Jul 2015 05:36:16a, *Mark Twain* inviava su
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general il messaggio news:630cddaa-e91f-4136-
. Vediamo cosa scrisse:

I have a Dell XPS 8500, with Windows 7 Professional, SP1,
with Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware, Avast, Malwarebytes,
Malwarebyte AntiExploit, Windows Defender and Windows
firewall. .

I also have

I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with XP, SP3,
with Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware, Avast, Malwarebytes,
Windows Defender and Windows firewall.


I have a laptop, an old core 2, with a couple of gb of ram and an ssd 120gb
I haven't any of those programs you are running to keep your computers safe
& running (LOL)
my laptop boots in 9-10 seconds and shuts down in about three
I'm not using windows

are you sure you really need to maintain such a waste of computing
resources?

--
/-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ /\/\ /\/\ /-\ T /-\
-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- - -=-
http://www.bb2002.it
............ [ al lavoro ] ...........

You might try deleting the temp file. Do this by starting run and typing in
%temp% to get to the temp file.

You can safely delete all of the temp files there. I would guess you have a
lot of them.





Mark Twain wrote:

I have a Dell XPS 8500, with Windows 7 Professional, SP1,
with Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware, Avast, Malwarebytes,
Malwarebyte AntiExploit, Windows Defender and Windows
firewall. .

(1) TB HD
Intel (R) Core (TM) i7-33-3770 CPU @ 3.40 GHz 3.40 GHz
Ram 12.0 GB
System type : 64-bit operating system

I also have

I have a Dell Dimension 8200 with XP, SP3,
with Spywareblaster, SuperAntispyware, Avast, Malwarebytes,
Windows Defender and Windows firewall.

Seagate Barracuda 7200 160 Gb HD
Intel (R) Pentium (R) 4 CPU 1.80 GHz
Ram 1.79 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM
System type : 32-bit operating system

and a

Seagate Backup Plus 1TB 2.5" USB 3.0 external HD (for both
computers)


I've noticed I've used allot of my HD on the 8500 (317 GB)
and while that still leaves 589 GB free it still concerns me.

Whereas on the 8200 I have 27.6 Used and 100GB free. (its
main purpose is a backup to the 8500)

I've run disk cleaner and defragmenter on both computers and have
been thinking of going through and deleting unnecessary files/folders
but would CcCleaner but good to use also for deleting unwanted programs
and files? I have no idea about the settings though?

Any other advice would be appreciated. I realize that at some point I'll
need to invest in an external HD to transfer/store files to keep the 8500
as clean as possible.

Thanks
Robert

On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 13:38:49 -0500, Henry wrote:

You might try deleting the temp file. Do this by starting run and typing in
%temp% to get to the temp file.


Temp file? Do you mean temp *folder*? Please don't mix up files and
folders; they are two different things.



You can safely delete all of the temp files there.


That's almost always true, but note that there are some program
installations which work in two steps. The first step concludes by
writing temporary files and rebooting. The second step starts
automatically after rebooting and needs to find those files there (and
then deletes them when it's done).

Other than doing it automatically when rebooting (that would interfere
with installations like the kind I described), it's always safe to
delete the contents of the temp folder. Because it's safe to delete
any temp files that aren't open and in use by an application, and
since Windows won't let you delete open files, it's safe to (try to)
delete them at any time. If any fail to delete because they're open,
they'll either be deleted automatically when the app using them
closes, or you'll get them the next time you delete manually.

Some people may suggest that you reboot before deleting anything, but
that's not necessary, for the reason described above (on the other
hand, it doesn't hurt to do it).

Of course I meant folder. Sometimes I get writing faster than I think :-)

Henry


Ken Blake, MVP wrote:

On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 13:38:49 -0500, Henry wrote:


You might try deleting the temp file. Do this by starting run and typing in
%temp% to get to the temp file.



Temp file? Do you mean temp *folder*? Please don't mix up files and
folders; they are two different things.




You can safely delete all of the temp files there.



That's almost always true, but note that there are some program
installations which work in two steps. The first step concludes by
writing temporary files and rebooting. The second step starts
automatically after rebooting and needs to find those files there (and
then deletes them when it's done).

Other than doing it automatically when rebooting (that would interfere
with installations like the kind I described), it's always safe to
delete the contents of the temp folder. Because it's safe to delete
any temp files that aren't open and in use by an application, and
since Windows won't let you delete open files, it's safe to (try to)
delete them at any time. If any fail to delete because they're open,
they'll either be deleted automatically when the app using them
closes, or you'll get them the next time you delete manually.

Some people may suggest that you reboot before deleting anything, but
that's not necessary, for the reason described above (on the other
hand, it doesn't hurt to do it).

On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 15:46:42 -0500, Henry wrote:

Of course I meant folder. Sometimes I get writing faster than I think :-)



OK, glad it was just a brain fart, and you understand the difference.


Ken Blake, MVP wrote:

On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 13:38:49 -0500, Henry wrote:


You might try deleting the temp file. Do this by starting run and typing in
%temp% to get to the temp file.



Temp file? Do you mean temp *folder*? Please don't mix up files and
folders; they are two different things.




You can safely delete all of the temp files there.



That's almost always true, but note that there are some program
installations which work in two steps. The first step concludes by
writing temporary files and rebooting. The second step starts
automatically after rebooting and needs to find those files there (and
then deletes them when it's done).

Other than doing it automatically when rebooting (that would interfere
with installations like the kind I described), it's always safe to
delete the contents of the temp folder. Because it's safe to delete
any temp files that aren't open and in use by an application, and
since Windows won't let you delete open files, it's safe to (try to)
delete them at any time. If any fail to delete because they're open,
they'll either be deleted automatically when the app using them
closes, or you'll get them the next time you delete manually.

Some people may suggest that you reboot before deleting anything, but
that's not necessary, for the reason described above (on the other
hand, it doesn't hurt to do it).

Hello Paul,


I'll read what you've given me but
I know this has nothing to do with
this post but an issue has come up
with the 8200.

When I press the power button it
seems to start normally and all the
lights are green but the screen
doesn't come on.

I haven't done anything to the computer
or changed anything and just used it
last night.

At present the power light button is on
but the indicator light flickers on/off.
The ABCD lights are all green and both
fans turning.

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Robert

p.s. Now the indicator light is out
but all other lights are green.

p.s.s. I doubt this matters but I've
also tried inserting a CD to force the
open but nothing.

Robert

The programs I have in place are from
suggestions from this site not my own.

If Paul or Ken thought I had too much
or something was not needed they would
have mentioned it long ago.

Robert

Hello Paul,

I downloaded/installed and ran WinDirStat.
that screen sure is wild looking but it let
me where the bulk was.

I also read the link on the truncation,.
interesting.

Thanks,
Robert

On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 16:22:22 -0700 (PDT), Mark Twain
wrote:



The programs I have in place are from
suggestions from this site not my own.

If Paul or Ken thought I had too much
or something was not needed they would
have mentioned it long ago.


I never think anyone has too much. Despite what many people tell you,
you should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs you
run, but *which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but
others have no effect on performance.

Regarding the 8200; it did crash last night with
a irrecoverable error but it came back and I
restarted it to make sure everything was OK and ran
scans.

Could it be that my video card has gone bad?

Robert