General

[quote=Burning]Keyboards are an entirely different matter.[/quote]

I forgot to add it's [url=http://img.2dehands.be/f/preview/136855887-casio-ca-100.jpg]one of these[/url], computer keyboards can probably survive a fall from a staircase.

[quote=Pavchka]I do recall this one time my younger brother accidentally skied my father's 1991 electronic keyboard off the stairs ("Shhhhhhhhhhk clonkity-BANG&quot and it's sitting here on the table right now working like a dream. XD[/quote]

Keyboards are an entirely different matter.

[quote=skye09]Most electronics dont like being dropped.[/quote]

True, but external HDs are much frailer than SSD nevertheless. It fell from less than half a meter on a thin wooden floor (on a boat, those floors are bendy) causing the USB port to be dislodged completely, the casing to be cracked and on top of that the thing arced just after it fell. It's a miracle the reading arm hadn't been damaged. Right now it's in an oversized casing of thick metal so it won't take damage from impact so easily, but I'm not taking it anywhere any more (also because of a for some reason hard-wired power cord), I'll just got one of those cheap Action USB sticks for that (8-10 Euros for 16 GB is not bad).

I do recall this one time my younger brother accidentally skied my father's 1991 electronic keyboard off the stairs ("Shhhhhhhhhhk clonkity-BANG&quot and it's sitting here on the table right now working like a dream. XD

8.37 GB. I'm definitely going to get Windirstat to see what's adding to my HD space now.

[quote=Pavchka]It's too bad SSDs are so expensive, because hard drives are so frail.[/quote]

Most electronics dont like being dropped.

Thanks for the suggestions everybody. I'll definitely try out Windirstat. My drive was strangely unstable. This afternoon I had 6.5 GB. Then shortly after dinner, while I had only Basiled a little, I had 5.5 GB. Three hours later, after having toyed with a lightweight MIDI program, I had 7 GB. And now I have 8GB after having only done some Wiki surfing. Tune-up Utilities was on a few times and most of the time [i]some[/i] free space becomes available after that, but never this much.

@JeIIal: Indeed, that's why I'm looking for advice. >< I can't afford a new machine for the time being. I rely on this laptop and have already taken some steps to relieve it from some of the (hardware and software) strain, like buying a 2 TB external hard drive* and an USB hub (one of my USB ports is wearing down). Maybe I'll get a desktop (more bang for its buck) in about half a year and use this laptop for when I'm away, but I'm not sure if I want to do that.

* My Dad dropped it, ripped out the USB port and now it's clicking from time to time and even spins down on occasion. Thanks, Dad. I don't think it's the Click of Death; its casing and power supply had to be replaced (the disc itself and PCB were okay) and the power supply indicator led flashes when the drive clicks, indicating an unstable power supply. Everything's better than the Click of Death! It's too bad SSDs are so expensive, because hard drives are so frail.

Ah I remember this happened to me once. Sucks the way I had to deal with it. I didn't know what was wrong so
I was desperate and just reformatted my computer. I had vista as well if you are wondering. Good luck fixing your problem as it sure is terrible
seeing your hard drive reaching 0 megabytes and you literally can't do anything.

@Pavchka I second the recommendation for "Windirstat" or "TreeSizeFree" to find out what is taking up all the space on your hard drive.
When you run them, they'll analyze the file structure and present a display showing which folders take up the most space, and let you monitor their sizes.
If you check daily or every couple of days it'll let you keep track of anything that's growing during those times and spot whatever it is that's eating up your hard drive.

In addition I'd recommend a thorough scan with both a regular anti-virus scanner and a spyware scanner like "Malwarebytes" just to be sure nothing evil is at work stealing your hard drive space.

There are a number of settings you can change in Windows to lessen the amount of disk space Windows eats up for itself, but those won't find out why your disk space is disappearing. Same with removing things you don't use or old things on the disk. That's good to do as a general "clean up", but it won't help if the space is mysteriously decreasing.

@Pavchka: Yes. It is best if you remove each and every single version of Java and then install the latest. However that is really not much space. Surely you have other things you can remove that are several gb in space.

Windirstat is your best friend if you want to know where your space is going.

Well, you may just have found the culprit alright. I removed MapleStory from my [i]E drive[/i] once again because the client wasn't up to date- and promptly over 2 GB of space became available on my [i]C drive[/i]. It went from 4.4 GB to 6.5 GB. Is that normal (asked the geek-who-knows-nothing-about-computers)?

[quote=qwedsa87]This series is kind of infamous for the heat the output, when playing games on it, it would pass boiling point because, although you can't see it the CPU doesn't actually have much heat transfer from it, only a single copper pipe going into a tiny fan that is barely moving any air. Half of its diameter isn't even the fan blade. Pair that up with older intel architecture and you get a nice toaster.[/quote]

Your original complaint was about heat due to dust build up not due to design flaw. The former is not a fault cause by the laptop. Like I said, many entry level laptops without a dedicated GPU uses a similar fan blower of that size on a single heat pipe HSF. In fact, my mom's Asus laptop cool a processor of the same uarch with an identical fan with a single heat pipe cooling system. Here's the Asus K40 HSF for example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-K40-K40AB-K40IN-K40AF-K50AB-Cooling-fan-Heatsink-/270965608097
This is the L300 (3 : 30) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMYkywflhVM

Either way, whether or not this particular model has a flawed cooling system, I'm not going to look it up. All I was pointing out that maybe the reason why he could bear using that laptop is because it isn't clogged up with dust as your first post stated. Since this is getting pointlessly off-topic, I'll end this here.

[quote=qwan456]It's terrible due to the fact that it idles at 80C due to "insane amount of dust"..? Dust can make even gaming / desktop replacement laptops get VERY hot or overheat, so while you may have other reasons to not like the laptop, your complaint is no reason to say it's terrible as it just mean you live or been in a very dusty environment. The fan look like a standard size fan to me that's on these entry level laptops. Although, the picture is very poor.

As far defragging, while I do agree that it should be done regularly, it won't help him free up disc space. What it does is rearrange bits of files that is scattered across the HDD. If it takes up 90% of the HDD, then it will still take up 90% after a defrag but it will be more organize.[/quote]

This series is kind of infamous for the heat the output, when playing games on it, it would pass boiling point because, although you can't see it the CPU doesn't actually have much heat transfer from it, only a single copper pipe going into a tiny fan that is barely moving any air. Half of its diameter isn't even the fan blade. Pair that up with older intel architecture and you get a nice toaster.

[quote=AlmaElma]@Pavchka: It's really not a big deal. This is something people do without really thinking twice. New system restore points will automatically generate over time.

It is not guaranteed that this is taking all your space however. It would be a good idea to look around your hard drive and analyze what is taking how much space, taking note of everything major and find any oddities.[/quote]

Right. I did a clean-up of the Remove/Edit part of the Control Panel (my laptop's set on Dutch so I may get the names wrong here) and took out everything I didn't want or need, like that wretched Pando Media Booster- every time I redownload MapleStory that's the first thing that goes.
I noticed Java is taking up quite some space, a few hundred Megabytes (at present that's "quite some space" for me). I have the latest version, but apparently there are also several issues of version 6 on my C drive. Can I freely remove those, or will I need them in order to use Java 7*?

*As for "Why the heck do you even run Java?": I need it to run Anaphraseus, a Computer Assisted Translation Tool that only works with Open Office.

@qwan456: So deliciously DOSsy, will do so right now.

The answer's 8.581 GB at present. Maybe I should keep some sort of journal of this to see if anything changes.

Yeah, more than likely the space allocated for SR isn't the one that cause the lost of ~20GB of space. If you want to check how much space is allocated for SR, go to start >> type in the search bar: cmd >> Type in: vssadmin list shadowstorage >> Hit Enter.

@Pavchka: It's really not a big deal. This is something people do without really thinking twice. New system restore points will automatically generate over time.

It is not guaranteed that this is taking all your space however. It would be a good idea to look around your hard drive and analyze what is taking how much space, taking note of everything major and find any oddities.

[quote=qwedsa87]>Toshiba Satelite L300

Man this thing is so terrible, I used to have one how you deal with it is beyond me. The thing idled at like 80C for me. Insane amount of dust when I took it apart, and the fan in it was tiny compared to its fitting.

Tried Defragging?

edit: [url=http://i.imgur.com/74dkN.jpg]Goring it felt great though[/url]

edit2: Look how tiny that fan is, and how big the middle bit is any way, no airflow.

Also there must be some irony in the fact that it's HDD was a WD Blue and not a Toshiba.[/quote]

GOD, looking at that is even more painful than it was when I opened up my recently purchased-but-25-years-old synthesizer and found enough to dustbunnies to repopulate Australia. For the record: this is an [url=http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb309/Touzokuou/D-50Inside.jpg]after clean-up[/url].

I'm not used to anything better than this Toshiba, guess that's why I can deal with it. A redeeming factor is its very good speakers. On the backside everything appears to be too demanding or heavy for it except the aforementioned Unreal Anthology. It was the best bang for my Buck. With 400 Euros back in 2008 it was either laptops with 75 GB har drive space, 1 GB RAM (but a Pentium) and Vitsa or this and Vista. As for the fan: is that why, once my fan starts spinning, it doesn't stop until I warm boot?

[quote=Suryoyo]i can recommend advanced system care(this progrom improved the overall perfomance of my toaster)
or if you have some money you can buy a SSD drive to boost windows incredibly and have some extra storage

EDIT: i think it is just better to buy a new laptop (but it will have windows 8 though)[/quote]

I can't afford SSD (no StuFi, DUO for some reason doesn't acknowledge my studies, so I can't afford much at present) so I'll buy a new laptop in a little over half a year. This one can hardly handle MapleStory. It seems pretty "tired" at times. I'll use this for music making.

[quote=Elitist]I had a similar problem before on my old Windows XP computer. I decided to search for a "disk space analyzer" on google to determine what folder or file was filling up my harddrive. I used Treesize Free but you could also you other disk space analyzers like Windirstat to check which files are actually filling up your hard drive. The problem for me actually turned out to be failed windows updates.

You shouldn't have that many BSODs. You need to analyze the minidumps generated by the BSOD to determine what cause the BSOD.

Isn't BobR around to help you?[/quote]

I haven't had a BSOD in quite some time now because I ran a System Restore. In the end I don't know what caused them. I just restores the machine to a point in time where I didn't have the stupid BSODs yet.

BobR's around, but I wanted help from a couple of people so their advice can compliment uh... each other (not sure if grammatical).

[quote=qwan456]One common problem people have on this site other than the SR points taking up space (SR takes up 15% of your C: drive space by default, btw) is due to fail patch of Maplestory. Every time the game patch, it first create a temporary folder to put the patch files in. If the patch fails, the game does not delete that folder nor does it overwritten it when the patch restarts. In other words, more fail patch = more space being taken up on your HDD.

Go to your MS folder and see if you see a folder that is named with random letters and number and with a ".$$" at the end. If it's there, delete them and empty your recycle bin.

It's terrible due to the fact that it idles at 80C due to "insane amount of dust"..? Dust can make even gaming / desktop replacement laptops get VERY hot or overheat, so while you may have other reasons to not like the laptop, your complaint is no reason to say it's terrible as it just mean you live or been in a very dusty environment. The fan look like a standard size fan to me that's on these entry level laptops. Although, the picture is very poor.

As far defragging, while I do agree that it should be done regularly, it won't help him free up disc space. What it does is rearrange bits of files that is scattered across the HDD. If it takes up 90% of the HDD, then it will still take up 90% after a defrag but it will be more organize.[/quote]

I purposely save MapleStory on the E drive because I don't want it to take up space on the C drive. I just downloaded the client yesterday (error 183), but maybe I should add that until I redownloaded, I had [b]5.6 GB[/b] free space on there. Something took 1 GB after MapleStory was installed. Weird! But I'll definitely keep the $$ suggestion in mind. Previously I did have those strange files in my MapleStory folder but didn't know what they were.

[quote=AlmaElma]Yes you do.
My Computer -> Right Click on Hard Drive -> Disk Cleanup

Make sure System Restore files are checked in and pretty much everything else in the list.[/quote]

Right, after several days of mental preparation and excessive research I will put that plan into action.

Thanks for your help, everyone!

[quote=Pavchka]Ah... I don't think I want to tamper with those. [/quote]
Yes you do.
My Computer -> Right Click on Hard Drive -> Disk Cleanup

Make sure System Restore files are checked in and pretty much everything else in the list.

One common problem people have on this site other than the SR points taking up space (SR takes up 15% of your C: drive space by default, btw) is due to fail patch of Maplestory. Every time the game patch, it first create a temporary folder to put the patch files in. If the patch fails, the game does not delete that folder nor does it overwritten it when the patch restarts. In other words, more fail patch = more space being taken up on your HDD.

Go to your MS folder and see if you see a folder that is named with random letters and number and with a ".$$" at the end. If it's there, delete them and empty your recycle bin.

[quote=qwedsa87]>Toshiba Satelite L300

Man this thing is so terrible, I used to have one how you deal with it is beyond me. The thing idled at like 80C for me. Insane amount of dust when I took it apart, and the fan in it was tiny compared to its fitting.

Tried Defragging?

edit: [url=http://i.imgur.com/74dkN.jpg]Goring it felt great though[/url]

edit2: Look how tiny that fan is, and how big the middle bit is any way, no airflow.

Also there must be some irony in the fact that it's HDD was a WD Blue and not a Toshiba.[/quote]

It's terrible due to the fact that it idles at 80C due to "insane amount of dust"..? Dust can make even gaming / desktop replacement laptops get VERY hot or overheat, so while you may have other reasons to not like the laptop, your complaint is no reason to say it's terrible as it just mean you live or been in a very dusty environment. The fan look like a standard size fan to me that's on these entry level laptops. Although, the picture is very poor.

As far defragging, while I do agree that it should be done regularly, it won't help him free up disc space. What it does is rearrange bits of files that is scattered across the HDD. If it takes up 90% of the HDD, then it will still take up 90% after a defrag but it will be more organize.

I had a similar problem before on my old Windows XP computer. I decided to search for a "disk space analyzer" on google to determine what folder or file was filling up my harddrive. I used Treesize Free but you could also you other disk space analyzers like Windirstat to check which files are actually filling up your hard drive. The problem for me actually turned out to be failed windows updates.

You shouldn't have that many BSODs. You need to analyze the minidumps generated by the BSOD to determine what cause the BSOD.

Isn't BobR around to help you?

i can recommend advanced system care(this progrom improved the overall perfomance of my toaster)
or if you have some money you can buy a SSD drive to boost windows incredibly and have some extra storage

EDIT: i think it is just better to buy a new laptop (but it will have windows 8 though)

>Toshiba Satelite L300

Man this thing is so terrible, I used to have one how you deal with it is beyond me. The thing idled at like 80C for me. Insane amount of dust when I took it apart, and the fan in it was tiny compared to its fitting.

Tried Defragging?

edit: [url=http://i.imgur.com/74dkN.jpg]Goring it felt great though[/url]

edit2: Look how tiny that fan is, and how big the middle bit is any way, no airflow.

Also there must be some irony in the fact that it's HDD was a WD Blue and not a Toshiba.

@Pavchka:

I'm gonna go now, but for now, I'll leave you this:

You can 'safely' remove files if you use Disk cleanup (right click drive, then click disk cleanup). I'm pretty sure there's a button for Clean system files. It will list the space taken by these files.

If you can't find what's eating your space there, then you have another problem.

[quote=SodiumOH]@Pavchka: You can limit the space used by it.

Also, microsoft update hotfix installers also take up space eventually.[/quote]

Right, thanks. I've only been using System Restore if I had serious problems (like recurring BSODs). Scary stuff.

@Pavchka: You can limit the space used by it.

Also, microsoft update hotfix installers also take up space eventually.

[quote=SodiumOH]Probably System Restore files.[/quote]

Ah... I don't think I want to tamper with those.

Probably System Restore files.