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Thread ID: 57782 2005-05-12 11:16:00 Retrieving HDD space from Outlook Express Mike S (1766) Press F1
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354478 2005-05-12 11:16:00 I have a five-year-old Toshiba 2100CDS laptop that I now have a use for. It runs at 400 MHz, has a 10 Gb hard drive and the OS is Windows 98. It did a sterling business job for some years but is now very slow. I’m sure part of the problem is clutter on the drive.

WINDOWS occupies 3.772 Gb
My Documents takes 1.607 Gb
Program files use 1.096 Gb

I’m concentrating on the WINDOWS folder; it’s the biggest and I have some obvious control over the other two.

The largest folders in the WINDOWS folder are: -
Local Settings 1.179 Gb
Application Data 867 Mb
TEMP 498 Mb
Temporary Internet Files 274 Mb

Local settings is largely Local Settings\Application Data\Identities (1.178 Gb). In Identities there are 3 different identities.

The other biggy, as above, is Application Data\Identities, which in turn comprises 2 folders (562 Mb and 236 Mb). In all cases any folder in an Identities folder has a long gobbledygook file name. Each is Outlook Express derived (“Inbox.dbx”, “Sent Items.dbx” and so on).

I only use one identity. How can I establish which it is from the folders tree? Having identified it, how can I eliminate the large and unnecessary hard drive overhead represented by all the others? What happens if I just delete the unwanted Identities folders? What’s the significance of some identities in ‘Local Settings’ and some in ‘Application Data’?

With such a small drive every byte counts of course. In short how can I rescue some hard drive space without wrecking everything?

Any useful comments would be appreciated.
Mike S (1766)
354479 2005-05-12 11:35:00 Firstly download CCleaner from here:
. majorgeeks . com/download . php?det=4191" target="_blank">www . majorgeeks . com
It will delete your temporary files, temporary internet files, recycle bin files, cookies, history, etc to clean your hard drive . Reboot afterwards .

Next go to Control Panel, Internet Options, General, Settings, and set the amount of disk space to use as 50MB .
On the General tab set your Days to keep pages in History at no more than 10 days unless absolutely necessary to have more . Five days would be better .

In Outlook Express go to File, Work Offline . Next go to File, Folder, Compact all folders . Return to File, Work Offline to remove the checkmark .

It may pay to leave the unwanted Identities folders, they would not be taking up a lot of room unless files were being saved to them . To check if this is the case do a search for * . dbx and see whether more than one Inbox . dbx file is of a larger size than others, if there is more than one .

You should now have a significant amount of file space returned .
tommy (2826)
354480 2005-05-12 11:50:00 Just to add to what tommy has said . If you find some bloated dbx files but you feel that their may be some important emails (you never know), burn them to CD before you wack them .

I recently found about 500MB of old OE files that I'd not thought to clean out because I no longer use OE and had changed the user . I was glad I did find them though, because they had some emails that had become relevant once again and I did not have copies .
Murray P (44)
354481 2005-05-12 12:01:00 WINDOWS occupies 3.772 Gb????

A fresh install of Windows 98 is 200 to 300mb.

Personally I would back up the worthy data and format the sucker.
Metla (12)
354482 2005-05-12 21:32:00 To tell which are the current identities, then look dates by setting windows explorer to view-details. When found, like Murray P, I would advise you to copy them somewhere else before deleting. When you have determined the correct identity for yourself, check the erase the deleted.dbx , as it just contains your deleted emails and OE automatically reconstructs a fresh one next time it is opened. pheonix (36)
354483 2005-05-12 23:32:00 Thank you all for feedback .

I have installed CCleaner . In the Windows tab I pressed the Analayze button; it did a lot of ‘thinking’ and eventually fell over, reporting the following:-


CCLEANER caused an exception 10H in module MSVBVM60 . DLL at 0177:66024d53 .
Registers:
EAX=006af690 CS=0177 EIP=66024d53 EFLGS=00000202
EBX=00580248 SS=017f ESP=006af690 EBP=006af698
ECX=00580000 DS=017f ESI=00580248 FS=28c7
EDX=817e4908 ES=017f EDI=00580248 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
e9 99 20 02 00 55 8b ec 51 8b 45 08 53 8b 1d ac
Stack dump:
deadcafe deadcafe 005801d0 66024d08 00580248 800a9c68 006af7ec 00428dbb 660255cc 00580248 006af7cc 00401b90 6604592d 00009c68 0042924a 800a0174


At that point I got very nervous and sat on my hands .

I checked for Updates but find I have the latest version . Aren’t computers exciting? . . . . . . . . I have no idea what all the above means . Any clues anybody? I’m disinclined to run CCleaner until I understand more about it .


On the Identities front I still don’t understand why there are some in ‘Local settings’ folder and some in ‘Application data’ .

Clearly I have more work to do . A re-install of Windows is beginning to look very slightly more attractive Metla! After my one bad experience with a re-install my confidence is zero, plus there are special programs for the Toshy laptop as well aren’t there?
Mike S (1766)
354484 2005-05-12 23:54:00 Take a note of the size of each identy, log into each identy that you want to remove and delete all the mail, then go check the size again.

I would agree with metla, track down your files, back them up, format, reinstall.
Rob99 (151)
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