Mystery Files

Hi All
Can anyone help me figure out where all the files are on a computer that I am looking at for someone.

Friend asked me to look at his daughters computer as it was running slow and having problems with the internet.

After looking at it at first I could find nothing out of the ordinary. Settings seem to corespond with the ones on my own computer so couldn't see many problems there. The internet had not even been set up so that was no problem. The only files on the computer were about 90mb of photos, nothing else. When I went in to do do the most basic of cleaning ie defrag disk clean up etc I found on the defrag that on a 35gb hard drive there was only 15gb of available space left. Now as i can only find the photos im wondering what is taking up the space. The only programs on the system is a kodak camara editing program and the one for a HP printer.
The computer is an IBM with Windows XP Professional pre installed and has a recovery disk. (Friend forgot to bring disk up north for me) I know that the preinstalled versions tend to have a lot of rubbish on them but not that much..
Could this be somthing on the lines of a widows version being installed over the top of another without the HD being reformatted first, leaving previous files still there but hidden. Computer is legit (own Win XP and Key Code) just handed round the family god knows how many times and not one of them knows much about them.
Any Ideas??????
Stitch

 

I don't know about IBM desktop computers, but my IBM T23 and T40 laptops came came preloaded with XP Pro and LOTS of rubbish, and the T40 has four recovery CDs (which I intend never to use).

If the computer has a CD burner, my advice would be to save the pictures to CD, format the drive, and reinstall XP.

If you have a legal copy of an XP installation CD (not a recovery CD), you can use it to install XP on any computer that has had the same version of XP (Home or Pro) installed on it in the past, with an important caveat ... when the time comes for product activation, you MUST use the product key for the original XP installation (there should be a Microsoft sticker with the product key somewhere on the computer). I've done this a number of times on both laptops, and have encountered no difficulties.

 

Hi Jim
That was my thought to(reformat). I have an external cd writer so can easily put photo's on a disk and yes there is a sticker with the activation key code on the computer. I have borowed my husbands, works XP pro cd so can use that rather than the recovery disk(s). The question was though was what is taking up nearly 20gb of HD when there is only 90mb of photo's on the drive. Complete mystery to me.
Stitch

 

explorer.exe

What I do is use explorer in classic mode with status bar enabled and folder window opened on the left. Click (to highlight) each folder on the left and watch size in middle section of status bar, and add them up if you like. Be sure to open any plus signs and get size of the subfolders individually. Of course, enable ability to see hidden and system files in folder options if you haven't.

You can also right-click drive and select properties to see the overall picture.

 

I understand that you have a mystery on your hands, and only three things occur to me about what (and where) they might be.

The first thought is that someone has manually set an overly large paging file, but that should show up in your defrag program.

The second is that someone has set the Recycle Bin to occupy a larger than normal (10%) amount of drive space.

The last is that there's something in hidden files that's taking up a lot of space. Go into Folder Options (either from Windows Explorer's Tools menu or from the Control Panel), click on the View tab, scroll down to Hide protected operating system files, uncheck it and click on OK. Then go looking, in Windows Explorer, for unusual files.

HTH.