If you have uploaded photos from your camera to your computer, why are you keeping them in your camera? Especially if they are going to get uploaded again? Why not delete them from the camera? If duplicate photos are in separate folders, deleting one folder will have no effect on another folder. Delete every photo that you don't need from the computer. If you're worried about losing photos, copy them onto a USB drive or burn them onto a CD. Then do a defrag and make sure again that you have cleared temp files-cache-history from your browser. If you are still short on hard drive space (by the way-this is NOT memory) then uninstall any programs that you don't use regularly. If the machine is still slow, I'd advise you to have a knowledgeable person do a complete virus/malware scan.

well the camera thing happened years ago i just never got around to deleting all the duplicates. If i spent 7 hours and only gained 6% space, i don't think i have enough photos/songs or documents to equal another 7 hours worth..so i guess my hard drive is just too small- the computer is about 5 years old--i do know how to run all of the computer/malware scans etc and do them regularly and nothing has come up so hopefully i am not missing anything. thanks for the info... any idea why i am having the problem with the page cannot be displayed? thx

you have not got rid of it yet so will not see the space they are still in your recycle bin that counts, till you empty that you will not gain your space.

use this program to help you clear out more that you can get rid of.
ATF-Cleaner
directions for use on on that site.

go to your add remove programs in control panel and look there to see if there are any old programs on the pc you no longer use and could remove that will give you space back.

follow this guide for more ideas and also make sure you open the pc case and clean out the insides of the pc get the dust out.
Help! My computer is slow!
Cleaning the computer and its components

if you have not updated and run malwarebytes I sure would do that too.
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

thanks so much!! Will do

If your photos have been deleted and are now all in the recycle bin then they are still taking up the same amount of space on your hard drive.

You will need to empty the recycle bin in order to free up space.

The free programme DupFinder is the fastest way to find duplicates and is easy to use.

Select the first drive or folder to search e.g. My Photos

Select the second drive or folder to compare with the first one e.g. Recycle Bin.

Search and all the duplicates are displayed together with their locations then just check the ones you want to delete.

With all of your duplicates already in the recycle bin it will be really easy to see if you have made a mistake and put every copy of a particular photo in the recycle bin because there will be no matching main folder associated with the recycle bin one..

Colin

Here is a link that might be useful: DupFinder

man, you mean i spent 7 hours doing this and there was an easy program out there??? Dang!! i cannot get it to work though and not sure if it is a site problem or because of my issue of the 'page cannot be displayed' as noted above. I did click refresh but it didn't help. It tells me that the page is no longer available. I did go to a different site and try to download it there but it needed winzip which i no longer have because my trial expired and i rarely use it so don't want to buy a subscription...hopefully i can figure something else out as it sounds great thanks

I would suggest you need to burn all your photos to a DVD or some CDs. Then delete all of them from the computer. This will give you some hard drive space. They can always be returned to the hard drive at some future time. Also perhaps remove some programs you never use to free up space

When the computer starts it creates a 'swap file' on the hard drive. This is a volatile file that grows and shrinks as necessary. Your only having 6% free space on the hard drive makes it almost impossible to create the swap file. You need a minimum of 20% free space for the computer to function reasonably well.

Do you notice the activity light on the front of the tower is forever flashing on? This is because of the lack of space.

How big is the hard drive? Click Start, click My computer to see.

Polarprincess, Sorry, my link points to the right programme but not to the best place to download it.

Here is a new link direct to the author's site. The current name for the programme is Duplicate File Finder version 3.5.

(Beware that there are a number of similarly named payware programmes.)

Colin

Here is a link that might be useful: Duplicate File Finder v3.5

thanks for the new link- i was able to access and download it with no problem but still have the winzip issue so can not open it. My hard drive is 40 GB. I am going to work today on removing some more files and maybe burning some photos and we will see if i can get to that 20%- thanks again

Polarprincess, Here is an excellent free programme to unzip files.

Download the Windows 32-bit .exe version just below the green line at the top of the page.

Colin

Here is a link that might be useful: 7-Zip freeware

polarprincess-
What do you have on your computer taking up a lot of space besides a bunch of photos? I have a computer with an 80GB hard drive, and I have never used more than 20GB. Are you loaded up with some programs you don't really use, or music files that you don't listen to?

Also, you should not be storing pictures permanently on your hard drive, at least without backing them up onto an external drive and/or a CD/DVD. Look at it this way, when your hard drive fails someday -- as happens to many people -- are you going to have a bunch of valuable stuff permanently disappear because you only saved it to your hard drive? I've had several friends tell me that they wished thay had listened to me when I suggested they do a backup of valuable files...but they never got around to it, and then their computer died. I'm not trying to lecture you...just giving you a word of advice.

Or you could even store them on a web-based picture site like Photobucket.

Thanks of the link to the free zip program- will check it out. My hard drive has lots of photos on it- every pic i have taken since 2004 and probably 4 or 5 duplicates of each one for 3 years, plus i have alot of photos i have saved of kitchens baths etc of ideas i am using for a remodeling project. I have about 150 songs which i really don't want to get rid of so trying to not have to delete those. I also have about 15,000 messages in my hotmail inbox, but they do not affect my hard drive do they as it has it's own storage? I am so backed up because i had cancer last year and had to go through surgery and chemo and radiation and i was too sick to keep up on my stuff so i am trying to play catch up now. I do have my family photos uploaded to photbucket, kodak, facebook and myspace and have mozy online.