[Jordo17]

my Vista's space is slowly dissapearing. When I got the computer, it had 309 GBs open. It now has 290. My downloads have only made up at most 1 gig or so. DiskState Indicates that the largest offenders are Windows (8.7 gigs) and Program Files (3.5, mostly in Common Files). Do any of these create their own files that would clog my computer needlessly?

[Classics]

Live update download's updates to your computer.
A cause may be a build up of old install's being stored on your drive.

Not realy sure if this is the problem, but might be good to look into while waiting for a better responce.

[katabby]

The space is probably taken up by old restore points.
click computer> C.right click properties. Click disc cleanup. when it starts you'll see "other options" or something similar,click it and you'll see remove all but the latest system restore points. click cleanup.
You're not losing much space. I think mine uses about 3-4 gb daily.

[Jordo17]

Thanks, Katabby! That did it. I actually had system restore disabled in an attempt to fix the problem myself, must have been the shadow copies (whatever those are).

[katabby]

I would turn system restore back on if I were you. Now that you know how to clear it, every now and then you can empty it if everything is running good.
System restore's not perfect, but unless you have a disc imaging program, you should use it. it can restore things that the vista backups can"t.
You do use backup?