I am unclear how I have to use the Recovery CD

Question

I have added up all the space my hard disk is using it comes to about 12GB, I have 27.9 GB disk space but my disk only has 1.80 disk space left. I have done everything obvious to resolve this problem. Recycle bin is empty, I have run disk clean up.
A computer expert suggested that Windows could have become confused and cannot recognize what space I have spare, this could be because I have run a program called Cyberscrub often. His solution was to reload Windows XP home. My laptop came with recovery disks, everything else already loaded. I have so much I do not want to lose on my laptop. If I use the recovery disks, will I lose everything on my computer, am I best to buy Windows XP home and re-load, in which case will I not lose my work?
Also I am unclear how I use the recovery discs, I cannot find any instructions on what you do.
The one person who could help me has gone off traveling and not contactable.
Any help greatly appreciated
Lorraine Hart

Answer 1

Hello,
what kind of programs do you have on your harddisk? Maybe a little description of your System will help us further. You mentioned, that you have a Program called Cyberscrub. Is this Program showing you your diskspace? Check this out! This program is, as i know, usually intended to wipe harddisks or files.
Maybe you can try some Registry cleaner that cleanes out some information which is showing you wrong information that is corrupted by Cyberscrub. Maybe this helps.
Another suggestion: run the program "chkdsk". This program will check out your filesystem on errors. Maybe it can fix that problem. You can run this program with right-clicking on the symbol of your systemdisk, clicking on "extras" and choosing the "Checking on errors" or something like.
At all events, when this fails, then you dont have to buy a new XP Home. You dont need it because you have already one on a recovery cd, and you can solve that easily.
You have to write down which programs you have in your system and backup your important data with a backup program or just burn it to a dvd or cd. You have the option to put the whole system on a mobile Harddisk connected over USB. This means backing up your system to this harddisk.
After that, you have to boot with the recovery-cd, by pushing the "c" button at boot time.
Then you follow the instructions and reload the "factory-like-installed" Windows XP on your Harddisk. Dont forget: all your data on the system disk will be erased, and the corrupted information of the free diskspace too. After that you just put the backup of your data back to your systemdisk and reinstall the programs you noted before the re-install of your system. Then the system will be clear again.
Let me know about the activity of your problem.
Greets