Ok... what the hell. I have an 80 gig HD in my laptop. I check the space remaining today and it is like 10 gigs. I think "that can't be right" and so I add up all the filesizes in the C:\ directory. They DO NOT add up... so I go to disk cleanup, and use the option to remove all restore data up to the last restore point. Now I have 36 gigs free!!
(which is about right)
How do I stop XP from eating up all my HD space like that???
1. Turn off your recycle bin and keep a program like recover4all handy just in case.
2. Right click on IE ->properties -> settings set this to like 200 Megs.
3. Right click my computer -> Advanced -> System Restore Set this to turn off System Restore on all drives. You can fix 99% of your issues with SFC /scannow, the second repair on the windows XP disk and this registry tool;
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=56d3c201-2c68-4de8-9229-ca494362419c&displaylang=enSo no need for a system restore.
4. Two super secret folders that windows hides from you. You can not browse to this folder and they contain quite a few temporary files. You have to type in the \content.ie5\ and \history.ie5\;
C:\Documents and Settings\ (Main user name here) \Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\
C:\Documents and Settings\ (Main user name here)\Local Settings\History\History.IE5
The History one you may have to use the cmd prompt to get too.
I've also seen Norton System protect/restore utility do some crazy crap with hard drive space... I personally wouldn't recommend using it.
Those are the things I use to keep my C drive neat. Some of these tricks I guess people might think are risky, but my Windows XP has been running almost 3 years now with out having to format and reload.
-FTen