Computer

[Milkyway!]

My computer litterally has 0 kb's of space left, on the main drive that runs the computer as a whole, with it being full I can't watch Youtube, play WoW, get on MSN, the internet runs horrible, it just stops working (c drive) Is there a way, I can take the d drive harddrive I have, that has 300 gigs of space and make it the main drive? If not, how do I return the computer back to the way it was when it was factory made?

 

[Ty Burna]

Gotta ask ya a couple questions first. First how large is your C: drive? Second, how much music, movies, photos etc do you have on your C: drive? Third, is there anything on your 300 GB hard drive?

 

[Milkyway!]

Gotta ask ya a couple questions first. First how large is your C: drive? Second, how much music, movies, photos etc do you have on your C: drive? Third, is there anything on your 300 GB hard drive?

C: drive is 9.99gigs. Secondly, not much I dont think. It came with 2 gigs, I've ran a few tests to try and ease down the space and yeah, that didnt work. Thirdly, Any of my video games (WoW, Warcraft 3) and w/e else came on it.

 

[Ty Burna]

Hmmm alright that gives me a better idea. Now I got one last question for you, do you know if you have 2 physical hard drives, or is it just one hard drive split into two partitions? If its the latter, then whoever set the partition up didn't do it correctly. The C: drive should at the very least have 40 GB on it. Now if it is two hard drives, you may want to back up any important data from your larger hard drive to an outside source, at this point we have a couple options. We can image your c: drive to your d: drive, this would make a mirror image of C: on d:. Granted this will wipe out everything off the D: drive, thus why backing up previously is important. You may have to reinstall your games at this point as well. The second option is to reinstall Windows on the larger hard drive. This will give you a clean slate to work with, and all your data will be on one hard drive instead of splitting it into two.

If it is only one hard drive with two partitions, then I believe a data backup and a format and reinstall Windows would be in order to get that back to one single partition on the hard drive.

 

[Ty Burna]

I apologize ahead of time if I lose or confuse you, I'm a computer/internet technician by trade, so if I get too technical let me know and I'll slow down.

 

[Milkyway!]

I dont know if I have the proper discs to install Vista on my other Hard Drive, but let me see if I can find it. If not we can "image" them together?

 

[Ty Burna]

Right, I'll need to find the site where to download the software for it, but essentially it creates a copy/clone of one hard drive and writes that copy to the second one. It doesn't merge the two hard drives together however, because it will wipe out the data that is on the hard drive the copy is being applied too.

 

[Milkyway!]

So basically, thats what were doing, thats just not whats happening?

 

[Ty Burna]

Alright what I need to know, and if you're not sure, easiest way is to take the side cover off your computer, is if you have 2 physical hard drives or just one. If you have just one then we can't use the image method. Basically at this point either way I look at it, the easiest route is to reinstall Windows.

 

[Milkyway!]

So whats a harddrive look like, how do I know if theres 2, and how do I take the side off?

Uh, I dont have the proper discs to install windows to the other one. So unless you know a site I can dl it off of I'd have to go buy it which would take a while seeing as how my mothers a douche.

 

[CCS]

When my computer starts going slow I just delete stuff I don't use. You'd be amazed how many shiity bands I had downloaded that I didnt even like.

 

[BooCocky]

ah you have Vista. that is your first proplem..

 

[Ty Burna]

This is a desktop correct? I'm assuming so, anyways what is the brand of your computer?

 

[Ty Burna]

ah you have Vista. that is your first proplem..

That is the very first problem of course, but what's odd to me is why do they have the system drive at only 10 GB? If it's vista it should be a newer computer.

 

[Milkyway!]

That is the very first problem of course, but what's odd to me is why do they have the system drive at only 10 GB? If it's vista it should be a newer computer.

Dell, inspiron. is the type. =\\ I don't know it came with 2 gigs of space LEFT on the harddrive, and thats the one that has Vista in it.

 

[Ty Burna]

Ah that explains everything now. Yup we aren't doing any looking on the inside, you have one hard drive split into two partitions or sections. Basically what they did (and why? I don't know) was they split the hard drive into the section for Vista only, and the other section (your larger disk) for storage and program installations. That one with vista should have been up to 20 GB. But I digress,

Milk do you get an error message when you try to run a program? Like it is out of memory or something to that effect? I think we can fix this without redoing the entire machine.

 

[Milkyway!]

Yup, always have. OR some other error one.

 

[Ty Burna]

Alright, I want you to check something for me. Go to Start -> Right click on Computer -> Properties -> On the left side click on Advanced system settings -> under Performance click on Settings -> Click on Advanced Tab -> Click on change under Virtual Memory -> What I want to know is how much virtual memory is set to on either the C: drive or the D: drive. Let me know what it shows for both and I'll continue from there.

 

[Milkyway!]

My preformence doesn't have the Settings link there, But under system it says I can "change settings" would that be of any use?

 

[Ty Burna]

Odd..go ahead and try change settings and see what it brings up. We're looking for virtual memory to change. If this doesn't work I'll PM you with instructions so I can remote access your computer and take a look after I get off lunch break.

 

[Milkyway!]

Allright I found everything your looking for under change and all that above. Sorry I missunderstood you, and from computer went to performance. Anyways. got it.

 

[Milkyway!]

The computer gave me instructions for the rest of it, I have it set where My D: drive is the main hard drive, or w/e now. AWESOME thanks

 

[Ty Burna]

I hope that helps the performance of your machine. I believe what happened was your C: drive didn't have enough space for the Virtual memory so it was running out whenever you were running your programs. Switching that to the D: drive and giving it a larger amount of Virtual memory to work with should increase performance. Glad to help.

 

[Milkyway!]

Okay, so to wrap this up, how do I make it where the C: drive has 20 gigs as you sugested?

 

[Ty Burna]

I actually just talked to one of my other technicians here and he said that calling Dell may be your best bet with that one. They have a program where they can expand that partition for you.