Why is my C drive full you ask. I had a recent computer repair customer that brought in a Dell E5400 laptop with Windows 7 installed. There C: drive had completely filled up.
They knew enough to run disk cleanup to free up some hard drive space. However, they could not permanently fix this problem. There are many different reasons why a Microsoft Windows C: hard drive can fill up.
Believe it or not, malware, spyware, viruses, etc. can fill up your hard drive. I ran malware scans with three different pieces of software that I regularly use. Also, I removed the installed antivirus software, which was having problems.
I installed a different free antivirus software and ran a full scan. This computer had been infected with quite a few malware programs. Also, I used my preferred PC optimization tool to free up around 60 gigabytes of disk space.
You read that correctly, I was able to free up 60 gigabytes of cache, temp files, internet cache, etc. I did NOT remove any other existing software besides replacing the antivirus that was not working correctly. After cleaning up this hard drive, I monitored the disk space usage periodically over the course of twenty four hours.
I noticed the C: drive filling up again, but quite slowly. I decided to investigate further. It is possible I was not able to successfully remove all the malware, spyware, viruses, etc. that infected this Dell E5400 laptop with Windows 7.
This is when reinstalling Windows 7 would have been apropos. However, I decided to disable what is known as Windows Error Reporting. Those are the annoying at time messages you receive about Microsoft Windows in the task bar in lower right hand corner.
You can adjust these settings by typing in “Windows Error Reporting” without quotes into a Windows 7 search box. Select “Choose how to check for solutions”. You are given four different ways to check for solutions:
* Automatically check for solutions (recommended)
* Automatically check for solutions and send addition report data, if needed
* Each time a problem occurs, ask me before checking for solutions
* Never check for solutions (not recommended)
Choose the last one “Never check for solutions”. I have noticed that this feature often time does not recommend any solutions that fixes problems on Microsoft Windows operating system anyways. I successfully disabled the Windows Error Reporting service.
I monitored the disk usage periodically over the period of a few hours, and noticed that the hard drive was no longer filling up.