Everything will slow down.. then you'll start getting more and more,,,, lots of out of memory errors that will make you so angry you will kick it and hurt your foot.

when you cleaned up and deleted those programs did you then go and empty your recycle bin? if not then you are not yet rid of stuff you need to go empty it.

things that take up a lot of space are pictures, videos,music and programs, if you have a lot of pictures or videos or music on the pc you should consider moving it off of the pc to some other form of storage/backup and clearing that space on the pc.

One problem you will have now with low space is that you will no longer be able to run a defrag on the pc, have you tried to do that? that would help too but it may not run one now as it is. I would also run a program like ccleaner or atf to help clear out a lot of the un-necessary clutter
ATF-Cleaner
directions are on site.

this site has good directions with pictures on how to defrag. I personally always turn off my screen saver prior to running defrag since it can interfere with it.
(run atf cleaner before you defrag)
Defragmenting your Windows XP hard drive

Go to "My Computer," right-click on the C: drive, click on Properties, and tell us how big your hard drive is and how much is free/used.

Thanks for your responses. I realize I didn't clarify that it is "Recovery Disk D" that is low on space.

Kudzu 9, "Properties" says there is only 3.10 MB free space out of 8.78 GB! I've emptied the Recycle Bin, so don't what to do next.

Again, thanks for your responses.

What is the used/free situation on your C: drive? And can you transfer/install any more of the stuff that's on the D: drive to the C: drive if it has more space?

If the D drive is the Recovery drive, it should not matter that it is almost filled. It is your C Drive that you should be using to store your documents, run your programs, etc. I don't know why you are getting a message about "low disk space" on your D drive unless you are trying to use it as your primary drive.

I'm sure it is apparent that I don't know much about computers or I would have provided the pertinent information on my original post!

Anyway, the C drive still has plenty of room; from a total of 363 GB, there are 281 GB remaining. If my math is correct, only 82 GB have been used. I do use the C Drive as the primary drive; D drive did its thing all by itself. :>)

I actually got to talk to a MSN tech person who told me my issue was not technical, but hard drive related. He said I should either purchase more hard drive space or delete programs I don't need/use. The problem with that is that I don't know what I need or use!

Next step for me to to take computer to a person/service who can solve the problem.

Again, thanks very much for your responses.

your pc came with a partition D set up on it with the recovery info on it, first of all have you made a copy of that recovery info on to disc for if you need it? I would do that, most will tell you to do that soon after you get the pc. The D partition should not be used for anything else because they set it up with just enough space in it to hold the recovery material and not much more.
do you by any chance perhaps have a backup programs that runs and saves your backups to that partition?
You do not want to remove anything from the recovery partition! Unless something has inadvertently been put there accidentally then that could be removed but messing with your recovery partition could leave you with no method to restore the pc if something happened.

the person you spoke with probably thought you had a regular second D partition that you used to store stuff on and that is why they told you to remove unused stuff, that would not be the advice given with a recovery partition.

Have you been running your malware scans and antivirus scans on the D partition as well as the C when you do scans?
I would run a malwarebytes scan on the entire pc including both the C and D drives, full scan.
How to download and install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware application for Windows computers

Make sure your antivirus program is up to date and make sure it is scanning both C and D drives.

Then I would check the D partition and see what all it list being in it.

fwiw.. each drive has its own recycle bin.
I never really pay much attention to it but recently, right clicked a persons 2nd drive and did Properties, then disk clean up... 286 mb in that drives recycle bin.

I'm sure I had already dumped the desktop trash can.
That computer took a long time deleting files everywhere... it went from a near full C drive to around 4.xx gb used on about a 60gb drive. It has just basic xp pro, nothing much more excpt messenger.
I didn't uninstall anything excpt tool bars & old office setup files and trash.

It was winxp with 51 virus infected files/keys found by an new avast full scan after a quick scan with Malwarebytes had already found about 5 items.

Virus program and firewall had been disabled by nephews/nieces...kids playing games.

The 1mb connection ran 94 at its bouncy peak ... after the clean up 115 smooth downloads for the updated browser versions and virus program.

Btw... after a new updated avast install and full scan, I decided and changed it to mse for its simplicity & it picked up 2 conflicter.?? virus items in the d drives recycle bin and root.
I wondered if default avast settings even scanned the second drive and no i didn't look to see if a partition or separate drive.