Your hard drive is probably 80Gb or more and I think windows wants a minimum of around 15% free space because it temporarly writes things to disk frequently.

What I'm getting at is those small flash drives probably are nowhere near enough storage to free up enough hard drive space.

Sounds like you need to add another hard drive inside your case or maybe add a portable hard drive. But either way you have a lot of files that need to be cleared out/cleaned up ... or maybe first figure out how you have managed to have used up all of that original hard drive space,,, and go from there.

Do you have fully functioning and updated antivirus program on that pc and have you used or installed antispyware programs? 18 months is not that old and it should not take that long to boot up. It sounds like you may have a ton of programs in your start up. And if you have not done some serious clean up with antispyware programs it could be loaded up with nasties that are loading up at start and phoning home.
I suggest you go online and run these scans, let them clean out anything they find.
trendmicro
malware scanner

If you have not been doing your windows updates go do those right away. Click start> windows update at the top.

I am sure you have some type of burner on that pc either a cd burner or dvd burner. I would get some burnable cd's and move your pictures to cd and store them, you can do the same with your other files.

You really need to find out what you have eating up that drive.
Here is a program that is free that you can download that will tell you everything about your pc, including what all is on it. I would suggest you go get it and run it so you can tell people what is on your pc.
belarc advisor

you can go to My Computer left click to look at your drives right click on the drive C then choose properties and see what it shows about your drive space. There you will find a button called disc cleanup you need to do that. There on that same box at the top you will see a tab called tools there are error checking and defragmentation you want to run both of those separately.
If you have a screen saver running you need to turn it off when you run those. To do that click on any clear space on the desktop, go to the screen saver area and choose none apply ok.

Do that stuff then let us know what is happening. And it helps if you give us more info on your computer like operating system, how big your hard drive is, if you have windows updates like SP2, all that will be on the belarc info which you can print out.

Thank you both very much.

As of right now, I have opened a photobucket account and am in the process of uploading photos and then deleting them from my computer. So far, I have uploaded 300 photos---boy that takes time---and it has not made one bit of difference. Now my c drive says zero free space--so I am not sure if I can download that belarc program.
I will keep working on this and let you know---again, thanks for all the advice. I appreciate it!

Do you have any video stored on you computer? That can take up a lot of space.

Do you store your pictures in your "My Picutres" file - you can check to see how large of file this is to see how much space it is taking up.

My computer is 7 years old and working great. I have taught myself basic maitenance (by using Google searches to fix my problems) If I can figure it out, anyone can, LOL!!

I recently bought a 120 GB hard drive that plugs into my computer by USB cable. I can drag folders over to that when my HD (80gb) starts getting too full. I have 10's of thousands of pictures though. And a pretty hefty amount of video on top of that.

You should always have your files backed up anyway - especially pictures and videos.

did you do the steps I mentioned in my post? Running the online scans, they do not install anything on your pc which is why I suggest them, you run them from online.
Definitely do the disc cleanup and the defrag that will help clean up your drive and organize it. You can get rid of all those temporary files that way and a lot of other accumulated junk.

The reason it is so important to find out if your computer has been compromised is because if it has your pc could be a zombie unit that hackers use to store their stuff on and you realize it when you run out of disc space. When you start to see you are out of disc space and you personally have not been putting a LOT of stuff on it like video, music, pic, programs that take a lot of room then that is a big red flag.
It is essential to find out where the files are located that are taking up the space. And running the scans can help to see if there are malware files loading it up.

Most of the photo storage sites have what is called a batch upload option which will upload several files at once so you do not have to do them just one or 2 at a time. It would be much easier and much faster just to drag them all on to a cd or dvd and burn them off then you can decide what to do with them later.
I too also have an external USB hard drive (500GB) that I use to keep any large files and pictures stored on.

But really look at your pc and figure out what is on it! You need to know if someone else has control of your pc.

Raven-
Thanks again---I cannot run disk cleanup and defrag because it keeps telling me it needs at least 15% free space to do that.
I do run Adaware and Spybot once a week-they are finding very little.
I will try the belarc and other things you suggested but it will Wed or Thurs before I can do that-dentist appts after work tomorrow.
I will let you guys know what happens.
Thanks to everyone for all the help. I greatly appreciate it!

Did you empty your recycle bin after deleting files? Deleted files aren't really gone until you empty them from the recycle bin.

Personally I would be terrified to have all my photographs stored online and no where else. Perhaps I am paranoid but that seems a bit too risky for my needs.

How many have you got and how big a file size? It would not take much to burn them to CDs or a DVD. That way you have your valuables stored in 2 places.

Open Internet Exploer and delete the temp. inet files. Tools/Internet Options/ Browsing History.

Open and empty the recycle bin.

Right click on start/ choose explore/ right click on the C drive/ properties/ tools/ check now/ check both boxes and run it. It will tell you that it will run on a reboot. This will run scandisk in dos startup mode and ID lost clusters or bad sectors and repair them.

You need to learn how to expore your hard drive and delete old install and temp files. Right click on start/choose explore. Under tools folder options choose to show all files. This will allow you to see the hidden folders. There is a lot of junk stored in the temp. directory under your user name. It is safe to delete all files in any folder named temp.

You can run a search for *.tmp. again delete all of these files that the pc will aloow you to. Some are active and wil not delete.

Windows downlaods and saves installs files. In a directory named software distribution/downloads. These can be removed.

Windows creates startup files to help the pc run faster (right) in a directory in windows named " prefetch" These are safe to delete. Windoze will recreae them as needed.

If you have an install CD than you can delete I386. These are a copy of the install CD. You will have to insert the CD for rvery update if you do this so its nice to leave them on the HD.

Run a search for *.zip files. Most of these are install files. ID each one before deleting or move them to a temp directory for a day or so to make sure that they are safe to delete.

First and foremost open System Restore and create a back up BEFORE deleting files if you aren't sure what you are doing. Learn about System Restore. It will allow you to mess with the files and yet have a restore point tyhat will take the pc back to that point. click on my computer/ properties/ system restore is at the top. Open to create a restore by start/ accesories/ system tools/ system restore.

Read the help files on the internet. I am self taught. I can build PCS, install the os and figure out why the d*$n thing isn't running right.

DEFRAG......The HD...

CrAzY LaRrY