I have a Dell Workstation with dual 10 GB hard drives. I don't have a ton of stuff installed on my C drive, but every time I try to install something, I get an error message stating that I don't have enough room on my drive. I don't see how this is possible. I'm running Win NT, and I can't find where you check to see how much free space vs. used space you have on your hard drive. Where do I find this, and any suggestions on what could be the problem I'm having?
Out of memory on C Drive
- Thread starter mjt
- Start date
mjt -
From the numbers, you're just flat out of space on your C drive. Chances are that when Dell configured your machine, that 10 GB drive was partitioned into a C drive and an E drive (maybe more). They installed Windows and base software on the 2 GB C drive and you've got 8GB sitting available on the E drive. If you've been installing software, you've probably been installing it on the C drive instead of the E drive and so you've been consuming more of the limited drive space.
Check your "My Computers" and see if you have E: and more drives. Then install your software on your E drive instead of your C drive.
Also, try checking the C:\temp directory to see how much space is used there. Also, delete your temporary internet files (via your browser) - there can be a lot of space used there. Also, if you have personal files stored on the C drive, try moving them to the E drive to free up space on C:.
Good luck.
From the numbers, you're just flat out of space on your C drive. Chances are that when Dell configured your machine, that 10 GB drive was partitioned into a C drive and an E drive (maybe more). They installed Windows and base software on the 2 GB C drive and you've got 8GB sitting available on the E drive. If you've been installing software, you've probably been installing it on the C drive instead of the E drive and so you've been consuming more of the limited drive space.
Check your "My Computers" and see if you have E: and more drives. Then install your software on your E drive instead of your C drive.
Also, try checking the C:\temp directory to see how much space is used there. Also, delete your temporary internet files (via your browser) - there can be a lot of space used there. Also, if you have personal files stored on the C drive, try moving them to the E drive to free up space on C:.
Good luck.
Baron
ET Founder
mjt,
The reason why I wanted you to report back the numbers is because I suspected that your capacity would be 1.99 GB, as you stated it was. I too had the exact same problem as you on an IBM Intellistation I purchased about a year ago. After investigating the problem further, I discovered that the manufacturer had chosen to install NT using the FAT file system. In a nutshell, FAT disk partitions can't be greater than 2048 MB or approximately 2 GB. Once Windows gets installed, it can eat up 50% of that space by itself.
In my case, IBM also installed a bunch of other stuff along with Windows NT on that same 2 GB partition like electronic books, proprietary diagnostic software, and all sorts of other stuff. So even though it was a brand new machine, it only had about 400 MB of available space on the C: drive, which I later found out was about enough to install MS Office and a few other programs. They didn't bother to set up additional partitions on that same disk. So the whole time I thought that the C: drive represented my entire 10 GB disk, when in fact it only represented about 1/5th of the available space on the drive.
If you don't already have a d: or e: drive, you'll have to create them yourself using NT's disk administrator. But one thing is for sure: you'll need to start removing some of the programs you have installed on your C: drive and reinstall them on another partition or a totally different hard disk to free up some of the disk space on C: that windows will need to perform its normal operations. Otherwise, your system could become pretty unstable.
The reason why I wanted you to report back the numbers is because I suspected that your capacity would be 1.99 GB, as you stated it was. I too had the exact same problem as you on an IBM Intellistation I purchased about a year ago. After investigating the problem further, I discovered that the manufacturer had chosen to install NT using the FAT file system. In a nutshell, FAT disk partitions can't be greater than 2048 MB or approximately 2 GB. Once Windows gets installed, it can eat up 50% of that space by itself.
In my case, IBM also installed a bunch of other stuff along with Windows NT on that same 2 GB partition like electronic books, proprietary diagnostic software, and all sorts of other stuff. So even though it was a brand new machine, it only had about 400 MB of available space on the C: drive, which I later found out was about enough to install MS Office and a few other programs. They didn't bother to set up additional partitions on that same disk. So the whole time I thought that the C: drive represented my entire 10 GB disk, when in fact it only represented about 1/5th of the available space on the drive.
If you don't already have a d: or e: drive, you'll have to create them yourself using NT's disk administrator. But one thing is for sure: you'll need to start removing some of the programs you have installed on your C: drive and reinstall them on another partition or a totally different hard disk to free up some of the disk space on C: that windows will need to perform its normal operations. Otherwise, your system could become pretty unstable.