Computer gurus

[LouAvul]

I opened up duckduckgo which said my available space on my computer was low. My C drive is 459 GB. This A.M. it was 5.41 GB free of 459 GB.

Now it's 2.59 GB free of 459 GB. Something's going on. I have and use CCleaner 7 and Malwarebytes. Windows Defender also. This computer never even reaches half full of the 459. I've also used disc cleanup.

Ideas? thnx

[LouAvul]

Thanks. I checked and the update was in my Win Updates. I clicked on "install" but my available space dropped to ~450 MB and Win Update said they couldn't download it.

The links I checked about it said "if your free space isn't critically low.." Mine's critically low. What's next? A crash?

[rascal]

WizTree - WOW!
Thank you for the tip.
I installed and ran it and can see that it could have saved me a lot of time in the past.
I’m sure it will be very helpful to me in managing space and identifying problem areas in the future.

[kiryandil]

Did “System files” hold around 100 Gb of files?

You should notice a slowdown in computer response at your level of storage.

[kiryandil]

Microsoft will be pushing an automatic fix to affected users in the forthcoming July 14 “Patch Tuesday” update.

[kiryandil]

Mine's critically low. What's next? A crash?

I don't think a crash is coming, but you don't have much, if any room for your system to work at any reasonable speed.

[kiryandil]

Did you flush your Recycle Bin? [delete all the files there]

[flamberge]

I did a boot-time run of the chkdsk program on my system C: drive and afterwards it found about 150GB of free space that was previously marked as "in use". This took about 10 minutes.

There were no missing files on the system.

I also found about 30GB of temporary files in the hidden folder C:\Users\"username"\AppData\Local\Temp.

I deleted all of the temp files, skipping the ones that could not be deleted because they were in use.

Just to be sure, I also run "SFC /scannow". That takes about 10 minutes.

System is running without problems.

[dagunk]

And now an unhelpful story from my distant past.
Many decades ago I bought a Mac computer. “Your new computer has one megabyte of memory”, the manual said. “That’s more than you’ll ever need.”
Gee, golly. I was impressed by that!
But now I take issue with the “more than you’ll ever need part”.
*******************************************
Funny.
My first computer was an Altair 8800 - yeah I assembled it and got it running.
It had 256 bytes of memory.

[Bikkuri]

Are you using Fedora plus NoMachine?

[Bikkuri]

Nevermind.. I see you are using Windows.
Didn’t catch the “C” the first read.

[dagunk]

“I bought myself a new 15” MacBook Air.”
You blew $1300 to surf the internet. You can buy bulletproof 11 gen intel Dell Latitude for 150 used on Ebay. 16gb ram with 15.6” display. This will surf the internet just as well as your $1300.
I own 3x of the above. I use them 3+ hours daily. I see one on eBay for $101

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Eh - Don’t be too hard on the guy. Not everybody is a wiz at this stuff.

I buy Dell refurbished desktop full-size towers off Amazon. Think the most I’ve paid was about $160. They run 24/7. Have four of them. One is over five years old. Had to replace one hard drive - no problem. I keep backups.

I throw the windows away and load FreeBSD. If you’re not computer-savvy stick with the Windows or load up Linux Mint. Switched wife from windows to Mint and she’s happy with it.

Now - If you want windows advice from me you talkin’ to the wrong guy. I’m stupid on windows. I don’t use it.

[IndispensableDestiny]

I know. My HTML didn’t work out.

[RitchieAprile]

This. Don’t need any third party product. Just use the tools you already have.

[RitchieAprile]

This. Don’t need any third party product. Just use the tools you already have.

[No.6]

Wonderful. So instead of updating settings in their internal DB it writes new records constantly and explodes the file to devour the disk.

Noting the linked article also recommends WizTree. Yes, you can do everything it does with commands and/or scripts; but a fast method with visualizations built-in is nice.

[dennisw]

How-To Geek
https://www.howtogeek.com
83
I Tried FreeBSD as a Desktop in 2025. Here’s How It Went
Feb 2, 2025 · FreeBSD has a reputation as a great server OS, but also as a difficult-to-install desktop. I decided to put that theory to the test with a modern version of FreeBSD in 2025.
https://www.howtogeek.com/i-tried-freebsd-as-a-desktop-heres-how-it-went/

[dennisw]

I buy Dell refurbished desktop full-size towers off Amazon. Think the most I’ve paid was about $160. They run 24/7. Have four of them. One is over five years old. Had to replace one hard drive - no problem. I keep backups.

I throw the windows away and load FreeBSD. If you’re not computer-savvy stick with the Windows or load up Linux Mint. Switched wife from windows to Mint and she’s happy with it.
____________

My main computer is a 2022 OptiPlex bought used from eBay. SFF- Small Form factor. I love OptiPlex because of all the USB A and C ports. I get 2x video out ports too/ Dell computers has been Linux friendly for 20 years. So I guess FreeBSD too.
You can run FreeBSD well with 8GB ram? Mint runs well with 8GB.

[dagunk]

My main computer is a 2022 OptiPlex bought used from eBay. SFF- Small Form factor. I love OptiPlex because of all the USB A and C ports. I get 2x video out ports too/ Dell computers has been Linux friendly for 20 years. So I guess FreeBSD too.
You can run FreeBSD well with 8GB ram? Mint runs well with 8GB.

*******************************************************8

Couple of 790s and a couple of 9010s. The 790s are 8G RAM, the 9010s are 16G RAM. Doesn’t seem to slow anything down - both run fast.

FreeBSD machine I’m on right now shows 29M active out of 16G. X and Firefox running.

Wife’s mint machine is a 790. Works fine. Right now it’s just sitting, shows 1.9G RAM in use. X is running. I loaded everything on it.

Unix systems don’t have the bloat windows does.

[powerset]

We have one Windows 7 system, and I have found that the “C:\Windows\Temp\” directory keeps accumulating files named “cab_1234_5” (where the digits vary rather randomly) at the rate of several per day. They seem to come in groups of 5, about twice per day: the first 4 file are size 0 but the 5th is usually 126 MB. Currently there are about 3180 such files going from today back to 1 Dec 2025. Right now we have about 57 GB of them!

They seem to originate from Windows housekeeping operations. So every so often I Delete (NOT “Trash”) those that are over N months old.

Look at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2557496/cab-x-files-found-in-windowstemp-folder

[Merrick]

No. It’s not the only solution.