There is no space on C: possible causes and solutions

Probably, it is not necessary to say that many users of Windows-systems very often notice: the place on the hard drive has the property to decrease noticeably. That gigabyte disappeared, then two, then more ... Why is this happening? If there is not enough free space on the hard drive, there may be a lot of reasons for that. However, further material offered for familiarization, represents the most basic situations, which can be fought by several simple methods.

Why there's a loss of space on C: possible causes

In general, any one exact reason for this phenomenon can be called very difficult. It's all about their totality.

As a rule, the space on the C disk is lost (Windows 10 is used or the system is ranked lower, it does not matter) mainly due to the activity of the system processes of the OS itself, as well as when the user clutters the computer.

However, the most common factors causing the emergence of such situations, we can name the following:

• The presence of too many rollback points;
• Constant installation of updates;
• The use of additional space by swap and hibernation files;
• Presence of temporary application files;
• Remnants of incorrectly deleted programs;
• Errors of the system disk with the appearance of bad sectors;
• Exposure to viruses.

Proceeding from the listed reasons, when the free space on the C drive disappears, you can use both standard tools for its release, and use special optimizer programs or uninstallers. But further emphasis will be placed mostly on the tools of the operating system itself.

Recovery points and backups

Of course, creating restore points or back-ups in the background is useful (is it a little useful when you need to restore Windows after an unexpected failure). However, you know, all this information is stored in a specially reserved area of the hard drive.

Therefore, if the space on the C drive is lost, Windows 7 or any other system allows such points or copies to be deleted. This is done through the standard cleaning menu of the system partition, access to which can be accessed through the PCM menu on the computer icon with the transition to the general security settings tab. Here there is a special button, after clicking on which elements to be cleaned, will be deleted.

Updates

In the fact that the free space on the hard disk is gone, the constantly updated updates can be guilty. Naturally, it is considered that it is not worthwhile to disable their installation, but it's not so simple.

As recent events with WannaCry and Petya.A viruses have shown, Microsoft specialists quickly released special update packages that supposedly allow not only to neutralize the threat, but, at least, to prevent its penetration into the system.

In addition, some packages for Windows 7 can cause a malfunction in the operating system itself. In this case, it is recommended that you remove the updates that cause errors, and then disable automatic installation. At best, you can select the search option and the download and installation suggestions.

Virtual Memory

Perhaps there was a loss of space on the hard disk and due to an improper virtual memory configuration, which the pagefile.sys system component, called the swap file, is responsible for.

To check its size, you need to enter the speed section. Automatic assignment of its size is not recommended. In principle, if you have 8 GB of RAM or more, you can turn off virtual memory altogether. Believe me, the speed of the system will not suffer from this (tested on a laptop with a Core i7-2620M processor with a frequency of 2.7 GHz and 8 GB RAM).

Hibernation File

Another reason for missing the space on drive C is the constant use of the switch to hibernation mode.

This mode works at the expense of the system component hiberfil.sys and saves the data of the running programs and their current settings, again, reserving the disk space of the system partition and RAM. By and large, for such situations it is better to use sleep mode, rather than hibernation, thereby removing such a huge file.

To do this, in the command console, you need to write the line powercfg / h off. Incidentally, after applying this command, the link to the hibernation mode disappears even in the main menu of the start button. In principle, on computers with small-volume disks, this mode is not recommended at all.

Temporary program files

Eating one attack, due to which the space on the C drive disappears, - uninstalled temporary application files. In this case, it's not just about web browsers that need to clean both the cache and cookies, and the history of visits, and delete all other temporary components, for example, as saved thumbnails of images.

As one of the most common situations, you can give an example of installing an application directly from the archiver window without first unpacking it to the hard drive. At the same time, after closing the archiver, you can immediately notice that, apparently, he unpacked everything that was inside the archive, which is comparable in size to the full size of the data there.

Another problem that disappears on the C drive is the Photoshop program or any other graphic or video editor. Such utilities create their own swap file, completely ignoring the basic settings of the system. As a result, the user gets an object of quite impressive size, which by volume can exceed the pagefile several times.

C: Space for deleted applications

Another problem is that uninstalling programs own Windows uninstaller does not show itself in the best way. This concerns the fact that not always it removes absolutely everything that was associated with the program. And if earlier, it was suggested to remove some elements on their own, now the system simply informs that the residual components will be deleted at the next reboot.

But nothing like this is happening. Files and folders remain, as well as the keys of the system registry (and on its size depends the speed of loading the OS). In this case, the optimal solution will be the use of special utilities, which provide for in-depth scanning of residual elements (Revo Uninstaller, iObit Uninstaller and the like).

Faulty sectors

Unfortunately, and the appearance of errors in the system partition, after which the hard disk reduces the free space, is also no exception. The trouble is that bad sectors can sometimes be completely trivial not to be read or recognized.

Thus, the system simply ignores them. Alternatively, you can start checking the hard drive, but it is advisable to do this not with the help of a regular tool, but from the command line, writing chkdsk c: / x / f / r or some variation. This method works in both the current system and when loading from a removable medium.

If the hard drive has physical damage, there's nothing to be done, although it is believed that the most extreme and last means of disk recovery can be the HDD Regenerator program, which (according to its creators) can magnetize the hard drive, which, however, causes serious enough Doubt.

Viruses

Finally, even many viruses are capable of attacking disk space. Most often this is due to advertising threats, spyware or spam. The problem here is that most of these hijackers are able to integrate into the operating system and all browsers, after which a huge amount of computer garbage remains in the disk both in the form of temporary files and in the form of their own elements.

Fighting such with such things is best with Disk programs (Rescue Disk), which can start even before the OS boots and even identify deeply hidden or integrated threats into the system.

Instead of an afterword

As you can see, there can be quite a lot of reasons, as well as how to eliminate the consequences. And so immediately to determine what was the root cause of reducing the free space, it is absolutely impossible. Therefore, we will have to act at random, to put it mildly, figuring out with what such a situation can be connected initially.

But do not despair. At least at least one of the proposed methods will work. True, it is necessary to carry out actions on the above list and in the order in which they were described.

As a definite conclusion, it can be noted that most of the loss of space on the hard drive is associated with the functioning of system processes and programs, as well as the incorrect removal of the application, after which a lot of computer garbage remains in the system, which can be very difficult to get rid of. However, it is possible to apply and programs-optimizers, although nobody can give a full guarantee of deleting residual files and folders. Visibility of cleaning is there, but is it all so good actually?

Naturally, virus attacks can not be excluded, but they do not always take place, and the occurrence of errors on the hard disk can be associated only with short-term failures, for example, when the power is suddenly disconnected or forced to reboot when it hangs up (especially during the installation of update packages).