Windows XP Showing Incorrect Disk Usage

[danhixon]

I have been battling hard drive space issues for the past few months. I've been uninstalling everything that isn't necessary, deleting files, emptying the recycle bin. My drive is supposedly 15GB and I can't figure out what is using the space.

I have 5 folders in my root:
Documents and Settings -- 528 MB
Inetpub -- 214 MB
MSOCache (hidden) -- 8MB
Program Files -- 786 MB
Windows -- 3.67 GB

My drive shows a capacity of 15.6 GB with 14.9 used and 708 MB free. How can this be? It looks like I should have 9GB free, right?

This link is a screenshot showing the above values:
http://communicatopia.s3.amazonaws.com/images/incorrect-space.png

I ran the parallels compression tool and it didn't do much. Any ideas?

 

[danhixon]

I solved my problem.

Short Answer: It was my system restore.

Long Answer: My system restore had been turned off for quite some time but apparently there were still 10GB of restore data hanging around. I had to show hidden system files, go into the system volume information folder and delete the folders in the restore directory. It was pretty scary but it worked fine. Gotta love windows!