Strange issue with my HD space

[Greg J]

Okay, I just nuked my computer (I posted about it last night), and Windows reinstalled fine. I just DL'd all the updates, Got Mozilla, installed an anti-virus program (Symantec), and Office. So I did a defrag, and it says I only have about 1.5 gigs of free space (out of 30)! That is less than I had before I wiped it!

I ran a search earlier and i saw in the process of that search a bunch of folders that should have been wiped out were being browsed. Upon looking in my program files all the old folders are still there. What do I do to get rid of all this stuff? I just wanted to start over so this damn thing would work right.

Thanks for any help. If I have not been specific enough anywhere please ask me to elaborate.

Greg

EDIT: Some files are showing up in blue. I have no idea what this means.

EDIT2: I just opened a Party Poker without reinstalling it. What is going on here. Obviously my HD was NOT wiped.

[housenuts]

how did you 'nuke' it?

did you format your hd?

[Greg J]

I reinstalled windows. I thought that would do it. I guess I did not reformat the HD in the process (though I thought that would do it).

[wonderwes]

The files are blue because they are system .dll and other windows OS files

[icepick]

[ QUOTE ]
I reinstalled windows. I thought that would do it. I guess I did not reformat the HD in the process (though I thought that would do it).

[/ QUOTE ]

It's been a while, however I believe that reformating your drive during installation is an option. You must of selected not to do it.

[krimson]

When I reinstall windows I usually fully delete and recreate the partition that I am putting it on. This will completely reformat the drive. You can do this at the point in the xp setup where you select which drive to install to.

[Greg J]

[ QUOTE ]
The files are blue because they are system .dll and other windows OS files

[/ QUOTE ]
This includes the Entire C drive itself under "My computer"

[Link774]

Blue just means it is compressed to save space. You probably did that at some point because you were running out of space. It'll hurt file access performance, though.

If all you did was reinstall windows then it didnt nuke it. It simply reinstalled the windows files on top of the files that were already there. This is used to repair windows if something goes wrong. You need to either run a program that will format, or make sure that you delete the old partion and then have windows install.