Hard Drive giving incorrect info

[substance]

Hiya:

Ive got a problem very similar to the one on the link below, only that I am running windows 98 se on a 4 gig fat 32 hard drive.

I recently delated a lot of files, which should have left me with at least 3 gig of space left However, when i click on hard drive proprties it says that i only have around 200 meg free space, even after double checking by selecting all of the files on the drive and clicking properties to see how much they add up to (something like 890 meg). I have included all hidden and system files in this too.

I downloaded trresize proffesional, ran it, but same thing. The pie chart shows that windows takes up 472 meg, program files 382 meg, drivers 19.8 meg, my documents 17 meg, and a few kb here and there. None of this should leave me with only 334 meg free on a 4 gig drive.

Ive checked the drive for errors, run nortons on it etc....

HELP!!

http://forums.techguy.org/t39547/s52d04393d07b08a825b2a517a95e4d4f.html

 

[PaulV]

Hi,

Try running the disk clean up wizard to remove items from your recycle bin, temp folder and Temp Internet and history folders.

That should clean up some room.

Paul V

 

[substance]

but ive done that...

basically... the drive has got 800 meg of data on it, and its a 4 gig drive... this means it should tell me that theres 3.2 gig free space... but it doesn't weather i right click on the drive and select properties or use a disk examining program like Treesize to look at it..


any one help???

 

[buckaroo]

Hi substance, welcome to TSG. Doesn't look like anybody came across this one before. I assume when you check under System Information it shows you the same thing, right? And you've cleaned out the Temp folder and ran Defrag, right?

Not that I think this will be the answer, but check out this program that will root out hidden url's stored on your system and allow you to delete them. I'm sure you don't have over 3 GB of url's, but see if using it shows a change in the reported free or used space.

http://www.fsm.nl/ward/

Okay, you said it only shows 200MB free space. Do you have software, like any games, that you can do full installations on just to see if the installation is stopped due to lack of disk space as you approach your supposedly free space limit? I know windows says you only have 200MB, but I wonder if an installation could force the issue. Just a shot-in-the-dark.