Continuing filling hard drives

[shannonkp]

Hello, I’m a first timer on this site. I’m not very computer savvy but I’ve found that I follow forum instructions fairly well. I'm not too sure how to get a lot of the information that will help you help me so please be a little patient. I’ll do what I can. I’m sure you’ll need more info, but here is a start:
I have an Acer Aspire 5570Z
Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack2
Processor: Genuine Intel®CPU T2080 @ 1.73GHz
32-bit Operating System
Avast anti-virus and Spybot search and destroy as well as CCleaner to help "clean"

I recognize there are a few VERY similar threads already posted. However, I also noticed in several notes not to follow others’ advice blindly – so I apologize for any redundancy.
My problem is that I only have very minimal memory left on C & D drives. I’ve removed almost all pictures and music; however it has not cleared much memory. In fact the memory appears to be more filled. Today I used CCleaner to “wipe” the drives. After doing so the D: drive went from almost filled to VERY close to being completely out of memory. There are 2 things that showed up w/ today’s date as modified 1 was 3590F75ABA9E485486C100C1A9D4FF06XLWJUFWNLVJYDBOA
And the other 3590F75ABA9E485486C100C1A9D4FF06HFCCYTURFJMLQWCT
Under properties they show to be taking about 13GB of space. Can you please advise if it safe to remove to clear up memory?
Also, if you could maybe walk me through showing what else I have on my computer maybe we can clear up more memory space.
Thank you so much for your time, patience and help!
Shannon

 

[EDO219]

Greetings. Is the D:\ drive of your Acer Aspire 5570Z a partition or do you have two hard drives? Also, what is the size of the drive(s)? Here are a few things which may help:

1.) Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Disk Cleanup
2.) Specify the C:\ drive.
3.) As long as there's nothing in your Recycle Bin that you want to keep, then you can check all of the boxes to delete the junk in each category. Some large items may be MS Office installation files and a Windows.old folder if you reinstalled Windows at some point.

Also, it might be worth-while to remove any programs you no longer use (Start >> Control Panel >> Add/ Remove Programs).

 

[shannonkp]

Thank you so much for getting back to me! I'm sorry - I'm not sure if 2 drives or partitioned - would it help that this is supposed to be a dual processor?
when I go to my computer - the drives listed show:
ACER(C): 9.25 GB free of 52.1 GB
DATA(D): 1.23 GB free of 51.8 GB

I did the disc cleanup and the following choices came up for ACER(C): drive
per user archived windows error report... 1.84 MB
per user queued windows error report... 748 MB
system archived windows error report... 291 KB
system queued windows error report... 24.5 MB

I went ahead and clicked "OK" for the items that were already checked and it cleared to 9.70 GB free on ACER(C). Unfortunately I did the DATA(D) before I wrote the original amount but it did only "clear" a very little bit of space.

Oh, and I've also uninstalled anything I don't use. Which also concerns me because I've done many times and there just to be so much memory space taken.

Is there anything else I should be doing?
Thank you again for all of your help!

Is there more I should be doing?

 

[EDO219]

hm ... Despite the odd sizes, it seems to me as though your laptop does use one partitioned HDD. If you're curious you can Start >> Run >> "diskmgmt.msc" and see if it lists only Disk 0.

Often laptop manufacturers will partition the HDD so that most of it (typically C:\) is for Windows and the users files, while 15 GB or so (typically D:\) is used to restore the system back to its factory settings. Some times backups of Windows are even stored on the partition periodically, which is what I bet those two new, large files on your D:\ drive are.

Do you have any files saved on the D:\ drive? If you have not saved any thing on the D:\ drive, then I'm rather curious what's on it. I've never seen a factory made drive partition that large solely to back up Windows. o_o