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Superchicken · Apr 27, 2005, 10:08 PM

Hey, my parents have an old near dead compaq piece of crap they use for e-mail. I'm gona hopefully get em a Mac mini this year, but for now they have an 8gig HD with essentially just a few apps and word files and e-mail things, but they have like NO extra space left, which doesn't make sense. I think the problem is my sister used to have a hidden directory she kept all her downloaded songs in. So I'd like to see about tracking that down and deleting it.
Anyone got any suggestions for utilities?

d4nth3m4n · Apr 27, 2005, 10:13 PM

what's the os on it? 2k, xp, 95, what?

Superchicken · Apr 27, 2005, 10:17 PM

Win 98

macroy · Apr 27, 2005, 10:21 PM

open up a dos prompt (start > run > cmd)
and type the command

"dir /a:h"

That will give you all the hidden files and directories at the current level.

edited: nevermind the /s will not work with the attribute arguement - sorry.

Superchicken · Apr 27, 2005, 10:23 PM

Just hidden though right?

macroy · Apr 27, 2005, 10:24 PM

yea the /a means attribute. So the H means hidden.

dir /? will give you all the arguements you can use.

Superchicken · Apr 28, 2005, 12:06 AM

Hmmm, I get start/ then run, then a lil dialouge box comes up. It says msconfig I tried typing in what you wrote into there, and it didn't work. What am I doing wrong?

phantomdragonz · Apr 28, 2005, 12:21 AM

Originally Posted by Superchicken

I think the problem is my sister used to have a hidden directory she kept all her downloaded songs in.

Am I the only one that doubts that thats what the file really contains...

Zach

Superchicken · Apr 28, 2005, 12:32 AM

I deleted all her mp3s once when I was in about grade 10 or so. She was kinda really mad at me

... that said now she has her own laptop...
I seriously don't understand how the heck my parents fubared their comp so badly... oh well in a few months I should be able to get em a Mac mini

Athens · Apr 28, 2005, 03:44 AM

just go to start, search, files and folders. Put in *.mp3 and click on more advance settings and select search hidden files and folders. It will find them if any, then you can see the path to where its located and unhide the folder.

macroy · Apr 28, 2005, 08:17 AM

Originally Posted by Superchicken

Hmmm, I get start/ then run, then a lil dialouge box comes up. It says msconfig I tried typing in what you wrote into there, and it didn't work. What am I doing wrong?

eh.... I meant go to the start menu, select 'run', then type in "cmd" in the box. This should bring up a dos prompt.

Or you can just do what Athens has suggested - use the "search" utility.

Superchicken · Apr 28, 2005, 01:16 PM

It doesn't have hidden files under advanced...

anyway I deleted some crap and got em 200 free megs... less than ideal but whatever... hopefully it'll tide em over till I can afford the mini.

bradoesch · Apr 28, 2005, 05:23 PM

Oh boy, fun with DOS and Windows 98.

Start->Run
Type 'command' (not cmd, that's for Windows 2000 and XP)
At the prompt, type
dir \
That brought you to the root level of your drive (just like opening Macintosh HD on the Mac)
The next command will search your drive only for folders that are hidden.

dir /s /a:hd

/s means to search recursively
/a:hd means to search for specific attribues, where we want hidden and directories (folders)

Superchicken · Apr 28, 2005, 08:58 PM

hmmm says nothing is found... anyone got a clue where several gigs of space could have gone?

macroy · Apr 28, 2005, 10:17 PM

how big is the partition? you mentioned the disk is 8GB... could it be that the partition is smaller? And the rest is unused? Or perhaps the box is already owned by someone else who's using it as their own storage box?

JHromadka · Apr 28, 2005, 11:18 PM

Go to a dos prompt and type the following:

del *.tmp /s

That deletes all temp files. Also go into Internet Explorer and then View | Options and tell it to delete Temporary Internet Files.

:XI: · Apr 29, 2005, 02:37 AM

This thread caused me to have a look at the search thing in WinXP. What's with the dog?

Oisín · Apr 29, 2005, 04:06 AM

Originally Posted by :XI:

This thread caused me to have a look at the search thing in WinXP. What's with the dog?

It's searching for that bone it buried in the backyard three months ago.

Searching, geddit? Aren't they just geniuses?

effgee · Apr 29, 2005, 01:13 PM

Originally Posted by Ois�n

It's searching for that bone it buried in the backyard three months ago. Searching, geddit? Aren't they just geniuses?

Ever since he got his Powerbook this week, he's being all snotty and stuff when talking about Windows ...

Oisín · Apr 29, 2005, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by effgee

Ever since he got his Powerbook this week, he's being all snotty and stuff when talking about Windows ...

Hey, I was snotty about Windows before too! I just feel better about it now

ghporter · Apr 29, 2005, 02:31 PM

I call XP's dog "Bob," and promptly dispatch it on any XP machine I have to use.

The biggest problem with your parent's computer is probably temp files of various types that are cluttering up everything. Further, these can include any uninstall folders left by OS upgrades and patches. That gets REALLY bloated after just a little while.

Open their IE and go to "Tools," then "Internet Options." In the middle there'll be a section about Temporary Internet Files. Click the "Delete Files" button. After you tell it that yes, you meant to delete all of them, it will probably take a while to go through and dump the gigabytes of browser cache that are no doubt there. Once that's done, empty their Recycle Bin.

Now, go to Windows Explorer and right click on their C: drive. You'll get an option to "clean up" the disk-select it. This will offer you a lot of options, including compressing the data on the drive, deleting temporary files (that you may have missed), and dumping various other unneeded crap. I'd stay away from the compress function-it takes forever to run-but tell it to go for the rest. Expect it to take a while to finish this up.

Finally, on that same C: drive context menu, there's going to be an option to defragment the drive. Do that. By now the drive is like swiss cheese, and defragmenting will help performance a lot.

I'd also recommend that you train your parents to dump their cache, empty the Recycle Bin, and defragment about once a month until you get them the Mac mini. I hate Win98 almost as much as 95 (not nearly as much as WinMe, though!), but it can get the job done until you get them something better.

Oisín · Apr 29, 2005, 03:09 PM

Note that since this sounds like a rather old computer (only 8 GB hard drive, running Win98, etc.), when Glenn says, �Expect it to take a while�, he actually means, �Expect this to take up to three or four hours�

ghporter · Apr 29, 2005, 06:34 PM

Originally Posted by Ois�n

�Expect this to take up to three or four hours�

He ain't kidding! The whole process, particularly the defragmenting, WILL take hours. Plan on it. No surfing for Mom and Dad while you're doing this, either, since anything that writes to the disk will cause defrag to start over-NOT something you want to do. It may actually be to your advantage to restart the computer in "Safe Mode" before you start the defragmenting, as this reduces background processes to the absolute minimum. Just the plain "Safe Mode," not one of the other Safe Mode options.

Good luck, and take a book with you.