[SOLVED] Fresh XP install 5gb??

AtomBomb

So I've got an older Dell Optiplex (GX260) that I just installed XP with Service Pack 2 on. It has a 20gb hard drive. I deleted the old partition, created a new one that is the size of the hdd, formatted it and installed XP. After install, when I look at my computer it says I have over 5gb of space used. However, when I highlight everything in the c: drive it says that only equals 1.2gb or so (which is what I would expect). I reformatted and got the same result. WTF?

EDIT- Well, I was a little quick to post this time. I booted the machine with Ghost and found hiberfil.sys taking up 2gb, which I guess makes sense because I've got 2gb of RAM in this thing. I disabled hibernation and got 2gb back. I've also got a 2gb page file, which I don't think I can do much about, right?

JHunz

You can change pagefile size through System Properties->Advanced->Performance->Advanced, although unless you have a compelling reason for changing it I'd leave it alone.

AtomBomb

Thanks JH. I went ahead and set the initial size to 256mb and the limit to 2042mb (it was set to 2042mb/4048mb).

Duh. I feel stupid.

falsedef

Beyond hibernation file and the page file, there's also hidden/system files, filesystem records, system restore, bad sectors, etc.

As far as the pagefile goes, you probably don't need it at all, since you seem to have 2gigs of ram. I'd suggest disabling it. If your memory gets low, it'll ask to reactivate it.

Daenris

AtomBomb wrote: »

Thanks JH. I went ahead and set the initial size to 256mb and the limit to 2042mb (it was set to 2042mb/4048mb).

Duh. I feel stupid.

Generally it's a better idea to just set this to a fixed size so that it doesn't have to be changed. 1-2GB would likely be fine. (just set the lower and upper limits to the same number).