Problems since moving Public folder from C to D drive

[Peter Brackenridge]

Thanks Dick. Have just had a quick run of the WinDirStat and here are a few photos of that. Was unsure how to do a clean but will have to go back and look later today. The amount being used and stored is no way close to 117 GB !

Peter

[William Bristow]

Hi Peter.

Run WinDirStat again, after it has completed its audit click the 'Options' heading in the top menu bar and then 'Show Unknown' (or press key F7), you will mostly likely then see a previously invisible 'Unknown' folder in the directory tree view that is using all the missing space.

I spoke to one of our IT gurus during a break today and he queried "Is this a Dell system?" Apparently they have had this issue with some of the Dell PCs on campus, seems Dell install their own hidden backup and restore software that grabs hard drive space and reserves it for itself but it doesn't show in normal Windows disk view. He said they removed the Dell backup and restore software and deleted the 'Unknown' folder to release the used space. He went on to add that there are a couple of other backup and restore apps that create hidden folders on the C partition but Dell is the only computer manufacturer that he has seen (at least in Europe) that ship with the software preinstalled and running as soon as you start up the system for the first time

William.

[Peter Brackenridge]

Hi William

I just ran WinDirStat again and did what you suggested and found The Unknown folder which was taking up a whopping 95.8GB !
The problem is I don't know how to get rid of it. In WinDirStat, when I select that unknown drive, all the options to delete it are unhighlighted and cant be clicked on.
By the way it is not a Dell, it is an ASUS laptop- sounds like they are doing something similar!
I have called asus who will get back to me in the next few days but in the meantime would be good to know if I can free up the space
Thanks for asking around at work about it.
Peter

[Peter Brackenridge]

I just ran WinDirStat as administrator which then i was able to look into the Unknown area. The unknown folder went away and I was able to find the file taking up all the space called Windows.edb which is under C: Program Data\Microscoft\Search\data\applications\windows\f iles\Windows.edb in WinDirStat.

This file I have read can become bloated (over 90GB for me) and has something to do with searching on the drive. I then looked at how to fix this problem.
I found these steps :

• In the search box, type indexing options.
• Tap or click Indexing Options.
• Tap or click Advanced.
• Tap or click Rebuild on the Indexing Settings tab.
• Tap or click OK to confirm

This reduced the Windows.edb file down to 331 MB !
Now the C drive says it has 91.5Gb on it and 25.5 GB spare. I think the 91.5 also includes a lot of free space as well as am not using that amount.
If I see things creeping up again i guess I will have to re-index again

Anyway thank you William, and Dick, for guiding me to a solution to this problem. I am glad I don't have to upgrade the disk and also doing a full reinstall all over again.

Peter

[William Bristow]

Sounds like you have made some progress Peter.

I’m not a Windows person, my area is UNIX and rely on others for Windows help.

I showed your post to Ben our IT guru at breakfast just now and he said there is a missing Windows 10 folder in your WinDirStat tree view, it is missing intentionally to protect Windows against users messing with important files but you can add it to the view to gain an insight into what else might be using up space.

The folder that is missing from view is called WindowsApps.

This is a link he found that describes how to make it visible, hope it helps:

https://windowsreport.com/windowsapp...ng-windows-10/

One other thing that might be relevant Ben said by default Windows 10 downloads games and ‘featured’ apps automatically and these might be where your C drive space has gone, our campus PC’s have this function disabled before the users get them but most home users don’t know how to turn it off.

On the PC/Laptop > Open ‘Store’ > Click the User Icon at the top of the screen > Click Settings > Turn Off ‘Update Apps Automatically’ This will stop Windows 10 downloading unwanted games and other dross but also means some installed apps that you might want to use will no longer get updated for bug fixes, you would need to manage that yourself.
Note that this does not stop normal Windows System Updates which continue as before, at the most inconvenient moments, it just stops installed apps from automatically updating and new unwanted apps from being installed.
Our IT dept do all that on our behalf but for home users of Windows 10 it is a pain where a computer has to serve multi functions.

I won’t be back on campus again till next week, only part time work now and on site Mon/Tue so wont see Ben again till Monday to ask further tips, probably ASUS would have responded to you by then!!!

William.

[William Bristow]

edited previous post to remove extra ‘A’ characters, don’t know where they came from, must be an iPad - Safari Browser - Forum Software mis-match...

[William Bristow]

In addition to the post below, Ben just emailed me this link, turning off Update Apps automatically only stops existing Windows 10 apps from auto-updating but he forgot that you need to edit the registry to prevent Windows 10 downloading unwanted new ones.
The linked page below tells you how to do that.

HTH

William.

https://www.easeus.com/computer-inst...ling-apps.html

[Peter Brackenridge]

Thanks William.

I will have a look at those things that your colleagues suggested.

I realised I have misread how much is now on the disk since doing the fix I mentioned. I now have 89GB of free space of the 118GB disc, and not 89GB full. So I think its all fine now.

Thanks again

Peter

[Eric Dose]

[recommend this thread be moved out of ACP area--it has nothing to do with ACP.]

[Bob Denny]

Thanks Eric, I just saw it catching up from being gone Friday and Yesterday... Moving now!