Recently, my mom's laptop has been showing a full C drive ever since she installed an application (unfortunately, I can't recall which one). The C drive is almost constantly at 0 bytes available. When she tries to transfer files to the D drive, it just fills up again. I think this might be malware, but after freeing up around 6GB, an offline scan with Microsoft Defender didn't detect anything. This is her work laptop, so I really need some assistance. I also noticed that the performance of the C drive is usually under 30% in Task Manager; I'm not sure if that's relevant.
5 Answers
Or you might want to check out Wiztree! I find it even faster and more user-friendly than Windirstat for identifying space hogs.
It's good to keep in mind that while malware can sometimes take up space, it's not typical for malware to fill up your drive deliberately. I recommend running a second opinion antivirus scan, maybe try AdwCleaner, just to be safe.
Honestly, if the C drive is only 128GB, it might just not be enough for what you're trying to do. Windows will consume a lot of that space over time just for its own system files. Upgrading to a larger SSD would likely solve your problems; something in the 500GB to 1TB range would give you much more breathing room.
You might want to check the Temp folder for leftover files. But if you've already deleted those, then that's good. Another thing to do is run Disk Cleanup as an administrator, which can help clear unnecessary files. Sometimes, Windows holds onto a lot of restore points that can eat up space.
Try using Windirstat to analyze what's taking up all the space on the C drive. It gives a visual breakdown that's super helpful in spotting large files and folders.
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