Besides deleting programs, what else can I safely delete on my C drive, to free up space?

[scherz0]

Please see screenshot below. Don't ask me to buy a new HD, or turn off Hibernate. I MUSTN'T delete Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop; Microsoft Office; Nuance NaturallySpeaking; or Steam.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

You already have a gallon in a quart jar, you are asking if anyone knows how to rewrite the laws of physics. As far as I and the scientific community knows, it's not possible.
You already know the answers, you just don't care to hear them. 100GB hard drive? You're kidding, right? This is 2022, not 1990. The only possible solution without altering your hardware would be to move those programs to a SaS environment and run them in the cloud which essentially turns your system into a terminal and relies on the remote server to provide adequate storage and processing power. In that scenario you could get by with your tiny 100GB drive.

 

[ARCADIAN]

i wouldnt have even graced him with an answer. just buyu a new hdd end of discussion. you can clone the drive to a bigger drive without losing any info, of course you have to be tech savy, if youre not, then time to fork out some cash and get it done, youre playing with fire, if your hdd fills, it will crash and it will not load anymore til you clear some space. dont want our suggestion, then kiss your stuff goodbye.

 

[philalethes]

"gallon in a quart jar...?" heh heh.
Ever hear of a "blivet?" When I first heard this term couple of decades ago, it meant "20 lbs of shit in a 10 # bag...." I see dictionary.com has toned this down to be more pc!

 

[MOSCOW93]

Please see screenshot below. Don't ask me to buy a new HD, or turn off Hibernate. I MUSTN'T delete Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop; Microsoft Office; Nuance NaturallySpeaking; or Steam.

View attachment 5664

What version of OS are you running and how old is your PC? My PC is 6 years old and it came with a 2.2 TB HDD built in and the OS is Windows 10 Pro. I rarely worry about space. "Philalethes" gave you the BEST answer.

 

[philalethes]

I am in some sympathy with Scherz0... 2007 I got a laptop with Vista on it, then upgraded it to Win 7 Pro. I have so many of my favorite old programs on that Win 7 computer I still use it despite having a faster Win 10 'puter (in which i have slaved two old spinners besides the SSD it came with).
But I stored all my data files on an external 2 TB USB drive to save space.
I even moved the SSD in the Win 7 to a newer laptop just to not have to reinstall 100's of obscure progs and tools collected over the years.

Scherz0... if the problem is you're worried about reinstalling so many fave cracked programs, etc., or somehow getting it all transferred onto a new hard drive.,..try moving all your downloads and My Docs personal data files to an external USB drive. I didn't see My Docs in your screen shot but I see a couple of fat downloads folders and a bloated desktop with a couple of gigs of space easily removable to an external drive.
I see 1 TB USB at Newegg for $67, and 2 TB is only $10 more.
I see a bunch of new or refurbed external 2 TB USB drives on Ebay for as little as $30, with FREE shipping!
If you are truly broke, find an old SATA drive, and connect it to your puter with a barebones SATA to USB connector
for $15, you don't even need a housing for it.
I've been where you are, C: drive nearly full. Scrounge around, get creative. Check with computer shops for old stuff, Craigslist, computer clubs... want ads!
Good luck!

 

[niltongaviao]

You already have a gallon in a quart jar, you are asking if anyone knows how to rewrite the laws of physics. As far as I and the scientific community knows, it's not possible.
You already know the answers, you just don't care to hear them. 100GB hard drive? You're kidding, right? This is 2022, not 1990. The only possible solution without altering your hardware would be to move those programs to a SaS environment and run them in the cloud which essentially turns your system into a terminal and relies on the remote server to provide adequate storage and processing power. In that scenario you could get by with your tiny 100GB drive.

This is the best answer ever.

 

[philalethes]

This is the best answer ever.

"best?" if the guy can't afford to buy a new drive, how is he going to afford running programs from the cloud? Esp. if he is running cracked progs? No way he can install. What then when internet goes down? Anything stored on the cloud is invitation to more privacy intrusion, and the possibility of them losing your data.

 

[WonderWoman]

I agree that the OP has an obsolete sized HD. One thing I can suggest is that MS Office can be run from the web and no longer needs to be installed locally. Other thing I can suggest (and mind you I don’t know the OP’s location) is to look into FreeCycle.org which is a website community whose goal is to keep things out of the landfills as long as possible. Even if things are broken there are people that might be able to fix something that another person cannot so people can post all sorts of different things on them the caveat is everything must be given away free there is no selling on there. Freecycle is global but that doesn’t guarantee it will be available where the OP is located. People post things they look to get rid of on there all the time and all sorts of different items including computers and maybe just maybe the person is located in an area accessible to Freecycle. People can also post on there that they are looking for a particular type of item and if somebody happens to have it they can reply to the post that they have the item being looked for and then the people negotiate pick up or delivery between themselves. All communication goes strictly through the website so that no one reveals their personal email address unless they want to. I have gotten good things on there, seen really crazy things on there and have even given away some good things on there. Check it out it is a free subscription.

Other than that I know you don’t wanna hear it but you have no choice you need a larger hard drive the one you have is a modern day ridiculous joke and it’s only usable for a doorstop.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

I was finishing up a project on a laptop of mine tonight and I had an additional thought. You had better start shopping for a new hard drive. You are killing that poor thing you have now (if it already hasn't failed.) Some of those programs you are running are real resource hogs, not only in disk i/o but I imagine that isn't exactly a state of the art new generation CPU with 16+GB of RAM which means lots of page file activity as well.
Seriously, the stress you are putting that little 100GB HD thru not to mention it's got to be pretty old with lots of hours isn't going to put up with the load you are putting it under.
BTW I am doing some very intensive video conversion and watching how much resource it's gobbling up made me think of your dilemma.

 

[jacidream]

Please see screenshot below. Don't ask me to buy a new HD, or turn off Hibernate. I MUSTN'T delete Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop; Microsoft Office; Nuance NaturallySpeaking; or Steam.

View attachment 5664

 

[jacidream]

Please see screenshot below. Don't ask me to buy a new HD, or turn off Hibernate. I MUSTN'T delete Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop; Microsoft Office; Nuance NaturallySpeaking; or Steam.

View attachment 5664

1) Redirect the following directories to another drive or secondary partition:
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Pictutes
Music
Video

You should NEVER mix OS and Data in the same partition. Always keep them separate.

Use Macrium Reflect to create an image of the OS Partition. That way you have an image that contains all your installed Programs and Applications, so when (no IF's here. There will come a time when a Microsoft Windows Update will fk up something in Windows) Microsoft pushes out a bad Update, it only takes five minutes to reimage your OS Partition and you won't need to re-install Windows.

Same if you get a virus or Malware , etc.

No stress or worries about your system getting hosed because all you need to do is reimage the last good OS Partition.

PS. Here is some encouragement for you to follow my advise I posted prior. In Win10 I've been having major issues with the WinSxS and Inflight directories increasing in size daily almost exponentially for over a week. I had to jump thru some hoops to delete the 100MB Reserved partition between my C Partition and my D Partition in order to increase the size of the OS Partition before the free space got so low the system would not function......Let me digress for a bit to present some technical information that some or none of you may be aware of and may help in understanding the issues I was having and how I drilled down to the root cause and what I did to fix the 8 day long problem.

As a matter of reference, an NTFS partition can ONLY be expanded to the RIGHT, expanding to the left is not possible. So I deleted the small reserved partition between C & D, then expanded the C (OS) Drive partition to include the space where the reserved partition was. That then enabled me to expand the OS partition even more, "stealing" 20 GB's from the D (Data) Drive partition. I knew going in this would only be a temporary expansion as the OS partition continued its growth at breakneck speed. Thru the entire 8 days if this crap, in a spreadsheet I documented the sizes of the most important directories, including: Windows, WinSxS, Inflight, all three Programxxx directories, system 32, SysWow64, Servicing, Installer, and lastly the Users\%username% directory. After five days I was able to eliminate all three Programxxx directories, system32, SysWow64, and the Installer directory, thus leaving Windows, WinSxS, Inflight, and my user directory. Elimination of the former was a no brainier as they all had static sizes that didn't fluctuate.

During this entire duration of this issue, I consistently ran sfc/scannow, and several DISM command lines I had included in a cmd batch file. It became apparent that every time I ran this script, the Windows directory increased in size... albeit miniscule compared to the size increases of the WinSxS and Inflight directories. In my troubleshooting I began subtracting the size of Inflight from WinSxS. I discovered that the actual size of the WinSxS directory was actually static and it was the Inflight Directory that was the culpret. Keep in mind I disabled any and all updates and actually had the network cable disconnected.

After some research the general consensus was that it was not good practice to delete the WinSxS or any of its sub directories. At this point I didn't care. Besides I had a solid OS image from a few days prior to when this all began that would be my saving grace. I booted my system with the Reflect Emergency PE USB device and vegan deleting the contents of the Inflight directory, which was at this point 32GB's in size and growing. I knew that at some point of the deletions, it would come to a grinding halt due to Win Security that is damn near impossible to circumvent. I shut off the system and slept on it. In the morning I tried a DISM script that was suppossed to force a Component Cleanup but didn't do squat. So.... With knowledge gained from 30 years in upper level IT and years of dealing with oddball issues, I went into Task Manager and perused down the list until I came to a Servicing task. I knew that this Task was the one who is suppossed to keep the very problem I was having, from occurring. Turns out, even though in a Ready state, it had not ran for over two weeks. And after deeper investigation I concluded that for whatever reason, either MS Update KB5015730, Cumulative Update Preview for .Net Framework 3.5 and 4.8 for Win10 OR MS Update KB5015878, Cumulative Update for Win10 21H2, had hosed the Servicing Task, effectively preventing it to run as designed resulting in the exponential growth of the In Flight directory. At any rate I forced it to run by manually engaging the Task Start. It ran for a little over 40 mins at which time I rebooted and documented the directory sizes. Much to my sheer happiness, the sizes of the Windows, WinSxS, and Inflight folders had returned to the Pre-problem levels. Windows dropped from 51.6GB to 19.6GB. WinSxS dropped from 40.4GB to 8GB. And the main problem child, Inflight, dropped from 42.7GB down to 30.7MB!!!! Overall the used space on the OS Partition dropped from 71.5GB down to 37.8GB.The free space increased from 18.8GB up to 33.7GB. All sizes had returned to exactly what the average sizes have been for close to 18 months.

You may think and wonder why I wasted my time screwing around with an issue that could have been resolved in five minutes had I reimaged the OS Partition with a good, clean image created prior to the two MS Win10 Updates which I am throughly convinced were the bad Updates pushed out from MS. Simple answer is that, I have always taken on a seemingly hopeless path of discovery, through logical troubleshooting methods and knowledge gained over the decades. Since I retired from my IT career years ago, it has given me the time to literally jump into the Windows OS to learn anything and everything I can about how it functions and how there is always a path processes follow thru many different divergent rehlms of technology to arrive at the expected outcome. When that outcome encounters a bottleneck, or corruption, or even a complete showstopper, it becomes my focus to rectify the problem and make it all flow again.

.......Now, to pick up back where I diverged, after a couple of days of regular use, I felt there were lingering issues or fallout from all of it. I did reimage the OS, but being very aware that one or both of the two aforementioned MS Updates would once again attempt to Update my system. After some searching I discovered a MS utility that states it will stop all updates or only ones of your choosing. The name of this utility is, "showORhide_Updates_wushowhide.diagcab." It's Digital Signature is from Microsoft Corporation, with a Timestamp of June 24, 2021 8:15:06 AM.

I cannot state at this point if it actually works. It is a util that cannot be run until there are Updates in the process of downloading, otherwise it can't see what's not there. I was on the ready when I unpaused WU and saw that the two previous troublemaking Updates were in fact being downloaded. However, and for reason (s) I can't explain, all of the updates downloaded 100%, with one proceeding to install, with no recourse to stop it. So I quickly ran "sc config wuauserv start=disabled & SC stop wuauserv", effectively stopping and disabling the Windows Update service. This is where i am currently at. I stopped to take a break and ended up composing a tech diatribe.... Stay tuned in the next couple of days and I'll update you on what I find. Until then, A hui hou,
PhotoGeek

 

[hacxx]

Please see screenshot below. Don't ask me to buy a new HD, or turn off Hibernate. I MUSTN'T delete Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop; Microsoft Office; Nuance NaturallySpeaking; or Steam.

View attachment 5664

There is multiple ways. Have you tried compressing all dll and exes with UPX?