3 ways to Free up unnecessary used HDD space on Windows 7

Posted on by RubenFixit

NOTE: These methods work best for systems that have a large amount of memory (RAM).


1. Hibernation Reserved Space

Hibernation reserves HD space up to the amount of memory your system has. To disable hibernation and recover that drive space then type the following command with administrator privileges in cmd.exe.

powercfg -h off

2. Decrease Virtual memory

Similarly to hibernation the system page file or virtual memory also reserves HD space up to the amount of memory your system has. This shouldn’t every be disabled, but you can reduce it to a more reasonable size especially if you have over 4GB of memory. Follow the steps bellow.
  • Right click “Computer” and click “Properties”
  • Click on “Advanced system settings” in the left column
  • In the “Performance” section, click on “Settings”
  • Go to the “Advanced “ tab
  • In the “Virtual Memory” section click on “Change”
  • Uncheck “Automatically manage paging File size for all drives”
  • Chose the “Custom size” radial button
    • set the “Initial size (MB):” to 512
    • set the “Maximum size (MB):” to 1024
  • Restart your computer for changes to take effect

3. Remove Service Pack 1 backups Thanks Alan McBurney

After installing Service Pack 1 about 4GB are used to maintain backup files. If you are certain that you will never need to revert back before SP1 then you can free up this space by typing the following command with administrator privileges in cmd.exe.

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded

Dell Laptop Puzzle

Posted on by RubenFixit

Before I became a network administrator assistant at my high school I had a reputation among my peers that I could fix anything. So when the IT crew ran into a problem they would usually ask for my help.

In this case, they had to completely disassemble this Dell laptop to reset the bios. For whatever reason, the IT crew couldn’t figure out or didn’t care to put the laptop back together. So one of them approached me and told me that I could have the laptop if I could put it back together. In just over 30min I had it back together and booting.

The best part is that I have never taken a laptop apart before and had to figure it out on my own. Just like a jigsaw puzzle except I didn’t have a picture to look at. The hardest part was figuring out where all the screws went. So of course, there were a few left over.

Note: This great guide wasn’t available until 2010. Trust me I tried google first, It is amazing how far the internet has come in the last 10 years.