Help! Please. Please. Please. (Laptop troubles)

[ohnoshedittant]

My laptop is telling me it has no free space on local disk C. Only 1% free space which is 'critical' apparently. It's working OK, but very slow.

Problem is I've done everything I can to free up space and nothing is helping. I think I have some sort of virus or something?

-I've moved all files (my documents, photos, video, music etc) onto an external hardrive thing and deleted them from my laptop.

-I've deleted any unused programs.

-I've run CC cleaner, the disk clean up thing and deleted the system restore points (apart from the most recent one).

-I've run Malaware and AVG, but both have come up clean.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong or what I can do to fix this problem?
I'll be very, very grateful!

TIA

Do make sure you have done as much as you can of removing other things you no longer use. CCleaner is quite good to use as when you click on Tools, the Uninstall list once populated can be quickly sorted by size.

I have just found (having just ran CCleaner so I could double check what you would be seeing) on my laptop a Game called Turbo Pizza which I never knew I had. It came free with the laptop and is taking up 170MB. Now I've uninstalled it. If you can work out what something is and you no longer use it, then try to uninstall it.

BadgerPaws is confident, so next step is to do as they say.

OK the link I gave to download MsiZap.exe no longer works, Microsoft have shuffled around their SDK links.

However you can download the required bits from here:
majorgeeks.com/Windows_Installer_CleanUp_Utility_d4459.html

1. Download and run the installer.
2. Bring up a command prompt (Start, Run, type in cmd and press enter)
3. Type cd C:\Program Files\Windows Installer Clean Up and press enter
4. Type msizap.exe G! and press enter

Thanks to NetworkGuy for noticing the link was for a more recent SDK (which shouldn't have been a problem), which caused me to test it, which made me find out that the installer no longer works.

Thanks for that badgerpaws, really appreciate your help

Have been piggybacking this thread and just wanted to say thankyou, I've followed all the steps and have now got 16% free space back, which with my small capacity laptop I think will be as good as it gets till I replace it!

"I've followed all the steps and have now got 16% free space back"

You've followed the steps to run the msizap.exe tool?

Apart from that last bit- will I get even more and an even more sparkly clean hard disk if I do that as well?

"Apart from that last bit"

So what bits of all the above have you run? Trying to work out what makes the most difference to people...

I just ran the installer clean up thing as instructed by badgerspaws and now have 28.4 GB of free space! Before I had less than 1GB. As far as I can tell everything is working OK, though I haven't done a restart yet....

THANK YOU for your help everyone. I would never have worked that out on my own!

One last question....what do I do with the installer clean up thing now? Do I leave it and run it now and again or uninstall and only download/run it again if it gets really full?

"One last question....what do I do with the installer clean up thing now? Do I leave it and run it now and again or uninstall and only download/run it again if it gets really full?"

Hang on to it for now, it's pretty small and you might need it again some time. Microsoft also seem a little reluctant to keep the tool downloaded from a fixed spot, perhaps because it's existence admits that their Operating System can't keep itself tidy and will pointlessly chew up disk space, and if you did try to find it in the future it might be harder to locate.

If you do run out of space again running the tool the way that I've given above may not make a difference. As is the tool is told to run in a very careful fashion and remove orphaned (broken) installers that are of no use to Windows. And it's quite possible for that folder to fill up with all manner of other rubbish that it won't remove. The tool can be run in a "stricter" mode to tell it to clean up more stuff and there are also other tools like the ones that NannyNick mentioned.

So if you do run out of space again check that folder and see if it's to blame. If it is then try to run the same tool in the same way and see if that helps. If not come back as there is more that we can do. But that "more" is riskier so for now I think we consider this a win and leave it well alone :)