I've just got myself a Dell Inspirion 1520 laptop as a christmas present.
Running Windows Vista Home basic.
Internet explorer 7.

It is used mainly for browsing the internet but I seem to have a problem retaining memory on the hard drive.

At the end of each session I will:
Tools>internet options>delete history/temp files/passwords/cookies etc.

I never seem to get any memory back!!!!!

I'm not downloading anything and if I do I take this into account.

eg: I will start with 76.6GB but after a few hours when switching it off I will only have 75.4GB despite clearing the history etc and not downloading anything.
I know it's not much but if it keeps doing this each time I use it I'm going to run out of space soon!

Is the history etc recorded anywhere else and need to be deleted from there as well?

Hope you guys have some ideas that will help me get my memory back.

Thanks,

PQ.

You probably have some malware eating up HDD space as it spreads, especially since you use IE7. What AV software do you use? Try using a free spyware scanner like Ad-Aware Personal Edition 2007, Spybot: Search & Destroy or AVG Anti-Spyware. Also, try scanning with an online scanner from McAfee or any other major AV company.

System Restore Points
Windows updates (sometimes quiet hidden)
Antivirus updates and logs
All other program updates
Logs (Everywhere)
%temp% folder constantly getting bigger
PageFile adjustments
Firefox copies (seems to make copies all the time - why I don't know)
Fragmentation (yes this can change the size of the drive used)

Actually there are undoubtedly hundreds of other places

Registry (that never stops getting bigger)
Tracks (small - but lots of them)
Prefetch (not sure on Vista's limit, no doubt it's big)
Pluggins
Indexing file
Recycle bin

At last, the part you clean

Cookies
History
Temporary Internet files
Saved pages
Saved passwords
Autocomplete
Address bar

Well the list STILL goes on (and on)

Here's a good start, download CCleaner and run it, tell me how much space it recovers

I use Norton 360, yes I know nobody likes it but it was what I was given and I am just more that a little computer stupid!
I'm still learning........and have loads of it to learn!

Thanks for the list, never knew there could be so many places.

I've got 'Regcure' is that similar to CCleaner?

At the moment I've only probably lost about 4GB but wanted to find out if there was anything I could do to put a stop to it before losing much more.

CCleaner cleans out all (well most) junk from your system. Please try it, it's free

Regcure repairs and cleans registry and startup areas - not the same

Run CCleaner *maybe* once a month, not after every browser session!

Firefox has an option (Under the Privacy tab) to "Clear Private data upon closing" which will clean
History, session cookies, download history, cache

IE6 doesn't have this option and I don't (will not) run IE7

I've downloaded CCleaner and run it. It got rid of 60mb.
I've also downloaded AVG Spyware. That found 5 tracking cookies.
I ran Regcure and that got rid of a few hundred things.

My Hard drive shows no increase in memory but I have downloaded a couple of bits.
Probably not much memory but at least I've found out a few things from you guys.

Also do you reakon I get rid of IE7 and look at using something like firefox?

Don't forget that System Restore will use up the drive space and the files will not show up as they are hidden.

Do Not get rid of Internet Explorer! You'll need it for updates from Microsoft. Using Firefox or Opera aren't bad ideas though.