(no subject)

[nny]

I am genuinely about an inch away from putting my fist through my sister's monitor. Her computer is driving me absolutely apeshit. See, I've uninstalled and deleted literally everything there is to uninstall/delete that will not, you know, terminally destroy the computer. There is actually less space than when I started. I have analysed the computer for a defragmentation thing, and it tells me that there are huge amounts of fragmentary files, but I cannot run the defrag program because there's not enough free space. And I can't get enough free space without defragging. Please, someone, tell me there's a way around this that doesn't involve stitches?

*cries*

I'm just gonna get an Etch-a-Sketch and go back to the John Sheppard School of Computer Repair.

Comments

[florahart]

Do you have room to install and use software like this? There's a trial version there. I use that and it tidies away stuff, but I dunno how much space it needs.

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes after my family stop arguing and I can navigate the halls without slammed doors. XD

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

I have talked to my dad, who is O Computer Guru, and he says that no way should you have that problem unless you have adware clogging up your computer. He says get spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html) and that should do it.
Hope that helps...

[villainny.livejournal.com]

I've run adaware and deleted all the nasty ferrety little things that turned up.

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

GO NNY, SLAYER OF BOTS.

(hope it helped. *hug*)

[wanderingwidget.livejournal.com]

If it still doesn't work then either call in a compy expert or re-install the operating system, which is basically the equivalent of nuking the dang thing back to the stone-age. You'll lose all data but - if there is a virus or something that you haven't been able to ferret out - reformatting the dang thing should work.

Probably.

[/random intrusion from f-of-f list surfer]

[saddle_tramp]

I'm likely too late to help, but did the computer have any programs like GoBack (automatic backup thing that saves a 'snapshot' of your system every time you startup so you can 'go back' if you screw something up) installed? Those programs like to label backup files as read-only, which means they can't be deleted unless you delete them through the particular program unless you go in and change the properties of the files. It's a pain to fix if you don't know what the problem is, but once you do it's pretty easy.

My Dad's old Dell did exactly what you've described when he had Norton Systemworks with GoBack installed on it. (I love Norton but never install GoBack, it's more trouble than it's worth!) It took me two days to muddle my way through wiping it because I couldn't even get it to reformat until I got the files out of the way so there was room to reformat. Small hard drives are a real PITA. :P I wound up having to uninstall everything I could, then go through every file on the computer outside of the Windows directory and delete anything that I knew shouldn't be there, just so I could get defrag to run.

Hope this helps! If not, I'd be glad to try and walk you through getting rid of your problem files if you're still having trouble. I've wiped computers a dozen times or more and run into all sorts of fun craziness I had to learn my way around. lol