running out of space on main drive. please help

[taria]

Second time doing this, okay here's my problem and it's going to take a long time to read.

I have 2 drives one in and one out. (make sense?) If I open a program such as Poser or Rhino or Photo-shop, My main drive goes to red and says I only have 3 g's left. If I open the browser and Microsoft word and my music player (windows media player) It says I only have 3 g's left. no matter what I open It says I only have 3 g's left. before I open it it says I have at least 5 or 6 g's and it's in the green. As far as I know there's nothing running in the background cause I turned all that off and it only runs if I click on it. (a trick I was taught a long time ago and it's been working ever sense) So how do I fix this so that I will stop running out of space on my main drive cause I'm sure and correct me if I am wrong that if you run out of space, your computer won't run. I can't afford to run out of space. Now most of my programs are on the external drive and the runtime folder for my poser program is also on the external drive cause it's huge.

So does anyone have any ideas short of me having to delete things off and re-adding them to the external cause some of the programs won't run off the external. (I have tried them already) Also I don't have a clue as to what all is in my add and remove section that I wouldn't need or can delete without them stopping something else that uses them.

also how do I get rid of the roller coaster tycoon program thats in there? I deleted out the short cut by mistake and now the icon is still in the add and remove section and won't go away. I keeps telling me it can't get rid of it. I gave the CD away cause I didn't like the game and the girl move away...I know stupid me.

[galeck1947]

Download and run Revo Uninstaller which is free and it will remove any programs you wish to uninstall. It will remove the programs completely ie all the registry items that relate to the program you are uninstalling.

[wildwood]

When you open (run) a program it expands the data ready for quick excess by the CPU. The programs you mention certainly can take up a lot of space. If you still have the operating sytem CD you may be well advised to seriously consider updating your HDD to a more acceptable size. They are pretty affordable nowadays.

[taria]

I can't afford to buy anything right now. after I paid my share of the bills I have like 10 bucks left for two weeks. sad but true.

[taria]

galeck1947, how do I know which programs to uninstall and which ones that won't make my computer freeze?

[MarkRae]

Assuming you're running a reasonably recent version of Windows (you don't mention which), do a Google search for "Disk cleanup" and follow the instructions.

[taria]

yes...well I have vista. it only came with 60 G's of space and well before my old external which by the way I wish I could get the information off it, went up in a tiny puff of smoke cause the computer guy I took it too didn't use a grounding plug on it when he tested it. I would save a few things over to the main drive. But I have taken those things off all expect for the programs which I downloaded onto the main drive. I got micro soft office which had programs on the CD that I really don't use and have never opened. but I'm scared that if I take any of them off my micro soft word wont work and I need that one to do my writing. I don't like the note pad thingy, to me it sucks. (sorry for the foulness there but it's true) and that along took up a lot of space. I think if I remember correctly it was like 5 g's maybe 6 g's it was a lot of space.

not sure if I asked this or not, but can I move my music over to the external and play it from there? cause I tried it once and my window media player wouldn't play it, can I use a different player to play from there? I have win-amp and real player and any of the DVD programs will play music as well. But how do I get it to play from off the external?

BTW thanks for the help so far..I am willing to try anything that does wipe out my drive completely.