Unistalled games - never recovered hd space

[SornyPanafonic]

its weird i unistalled call of duty and far cry and i havent gained a single mb back on my HD. it was supposed to have cleared up 5 gigs worth of space but i have yet to get any. i rebooted the comp but no nothing. any ideas??

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Try emptying your Recycle Bin.

 

[SornyPanafonic]

haha...if only. i unistalled the games from the control panel add/remove programs. i looked at the folders they were in and theyre empty, but still i have yet to get any HD space back...its becoming a real pain since this has happened for 3 games. CoD twice and far cry. hoping after a few restarts it will realize there is nothign there.


also for some reason my the partition where my OS located widly fluctuates its free space - last night before i turned it off i had 2.9 gigs and today i have 1.29 gb. and this continously happens...randomly everyday.

 

[Masque]

Is it possible that you're short on hard drive space and with Windows managing the swap files, you'll get that fluctuation? It could also account for the lack of new drive space once the programs are uninstalled.

 

[Rick]

There's no real positive answer to this, as far as I know.

It hardly even makes sense.

I wonder if perhaps it was just a mistake on your part? Maybe you "thought" you had xxx amount of space, but you really didn't. Or that space was taken up by something else.

Once you uninstall a game, aside from a few small files (usually), the data is completely erased. It doesn't even go to your recycle bin.

The only explanation would be a corrupted file system, perhaps. Running chkdsk or scandisk will solve this depending on your version of Windows.

 

[Nic]

Switch Off system restore, then switch it back On (WinXP/ME). This is the last place left to look (though unlikely), unless you are using GoBack, or some other software that keeps track of system changes or protects deleted files.

 

[Goalie]

I can confirm Goback likes to eat disk space with no mercy.

I would also suggest running a scandisk. Space can get lost easily with bad file descriptors/FAT tables/etc.

If you go to the directory where the files are installed, are they still there?

Is it possible that you installed the program as an Admin, and then are running the uninstall script in a different account? This can cause the reg entries to (maybe) be removed while the files can't be touched. The reg entries might remain, as well.

Just a few things for you to check.

 

[SornyPanafonic]

nah i dont have any of those programs.
no nothing seems to work - i just erased unreals 2k4 folder then uninstalled the game and i didnt recover a single mb. the game is 5gigs so its not like i dont need the space. i was planning on installing nam'67 and sims 2 (when i get it) in its space. ive restarted my comp a few times but nothing. much thanks for any suggestions.
i havent run scandisk yet but will do as soon as i can.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Have you tried setting your pagefile to a fixed minimum and the same maximum?
With your amount of memory, try with min 1200MB/max 1200MB.
Don't know ehere to set that in XP though.
Just check your (pagefile.sys) a few times and note the size. It may not be set up properly or is perhaps corrupt.

 

[SornyPanafonic]

i dont know how to do it either but im gonna try to find it. i just unistalled call of duty AGAIN (i had reinstalled since the last time) and again i didnt gain any space. this is becoming really annoying - im not gonna uninstall anything else till i figure this thing out. very weird.

edit: i ran the scandisk/repair disk program winxp has and it came up with nothing. i still have yet to see the 5 gigs or unreal tho. since then my comp has been restarted 10 times, but ive come up empty everytime.

edit: the pagesys file in my c drive stands at 1.31 gb (the same size as call of duty), its also 1.31 gb on my e drive. i cant seem to find it on my D drive (where unreal was located.
- what do you think i should do?

 

[MrGaribaldi]

It sounds like you have a pagefile which is out of control.

Unless you're doing a lot of photo editing, a pagefile of 2.63 GB is overkill!
Unfortunately, I don't know where the setting is in XP, but I'm sure some other member can tell you.

And just to check something, go to your D drive, select all, and then right-click for the properties of all the files and folders.
You'll be getting 2 numbers. One is Size and the other is Size on disk. Are there any big differences between the two?
If yes, a defrag might help you recover some of that space, but how much I can't tell you.

 

[SornyPanafonic]

good idea MrGaribaldi. i did it and it came up with size 66.8 and size on disk 66.8 (this is actually like 50 mbs bigger then the size). the thing is that my hd is 80gigs or 74.5 - does it matter that size is 8 gigs smaller then the actual hard drive? also i have 2.3 gigs of free space - should that have come up on size? much thanks.


i dont do any photo editing. all i do is play far cry online and watch some movies now and then. i do dl a whole lot but not lately since i dont have any room (i tend to burn stuff on dvdrs).

edit: i did the same thing to my c drive and it came up with size: 27.6 GB and size on disk: 27.6 GB - but again the actual HD is larger - 31.2 GB with 900 mb of free space.

for my e drive it says size: 4.85GB and size on disk at 4.72GB
while the entire drive is 7.08GB with 1.7GB of free space (windows is on this one)

 

[SornyPanafonic]

i was told by someone that it might have something to do with me watching a lot of avi movies. they didnt know what to do about it - they just told me to search online for the same problem. ive been looking but so far have come up empty. if anyone knows how to solve this problem or just know what im talking about your comments will be greatly appreciated. much thanks.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

All your harddisks are over-filled.
Burn some files to CD/DVD and then delete them from your harddisk.
On average, you need to keep about 15% free on any harddisk.
With HDs so cheap, go and treat yourself to a 160-250GB Seagate or Western Digital HD with 8MB cache.

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Originally posted by SornyPanafonic
it came up with size 66.8 and size on disk 66.8 (this is actually like 50 mbs bigger then the size). the thing is that my hd is 80gigs or 74.5 - does it matter that size is 8 gigs smaller then the actual hard drive? also i have 2.3 gigs of free space - should that have come up on size? much thanks.

edit: i did the same thing to my c drive and it came up with size: 27.6 GB and size on disk: 27.6 GB - but again the actual HD is larger - 31.2 GB with 900 mb of free space.

for my e drive it says size: 4.85GB and size on disk at 4.72GB
while the entire drive is 7.08GB with 1.7GB of free space (windows is on this one)

This is because the way the filesystem is designed. It uses small blocks called clusters to allocate space for files. The size of these clusters varies from 512 bytes to 64 kB, depending on the partition size. So, with a large partition, even an empty (0 byte) file would allocate one cluster, for example 16 kB. Most file sizes aren't exactly n * cluster size either, that's why you get this "wasted" space.

 

[SNGX1275]

Ok, I was going to answer that question about adjusting the swapfile in XP while I was at work on an XP machine but I something came up just as I was typing and I had to get back to work.

So now I'm going to try and remember how you do it (I'm on a 2k machine now )
Right click on My Computer (either on desktop or in start menu, or probably the system control panel) and go to advanced tab. Then the first box is performance, click there. Then you can determine which drives get the pagefile(s) and how you want them managed (windows decides, or you set max and min size). *Note* you must hit the set button otherwise it doesn't take effect. Then click on OK and restart.

I'll revise this post later tonight or tomorrow at work when I'm on an XP machine if my memory was not entirely correct.

 

[dgast]

Once you go the performance tab as explained by SNGX1275 in previous post, you then select the advanced tab, and then towards the bottom in the virtual memory section select change. Make your changes, hit set then ok, reboot.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

There is a tool "Directory Snoop" which (amongst others) lets you recover the space that is taken by old deleted files.
It is a bit complicated to work with, but this might do the trick for your recovery.
http://www.briggsoft.com/dsnoop.htm