Uninstalled Avast, Lost a LOT of Free Space on HD

[Anatoon]

Hi all, I hope someone can help me here. My hard drive was almost full, only 300 megs free. I was able to delete and uninstall a bunch of stuff to where I had 1.09 gigs available. I wanted to defrag the HD, but Windows said I needed more free space to defrag. So I went back to the software list and saw that Avast was 499 megs, and since this is a computer that is not online I figured I'd go ahead and uninstall it. I ran the uninstall, rebooted like it requested, and now I have 715 megs of free space! Uninstalling Avast cost me close to 300 megs of the space I had before I removed it!!!!! Ran all kinds of disk cleanup software, my recycle bin is empty, and I can't find anymore temp folders to delete.
I'm getting desperate here, next step may be to format the HD if no one has any ideas.
TIA!
-HJR

[ComputerRepairTech]

I personally use the program foldersizes (its not free) to find whats taking up space but a lot of people use the free program WinDirStat.  If you don't like either one you can also check http://alternativeto.net/software/windirstat/ for some alternatives.

[schmidthouse]

Hi all, I hope someone can help me here. My hard drive was almost full, only 300 megs free. I was able to delete and uninstall a bunch of stuff to where I had 1.09 gigs available. I wanted to defrag the HD, but Windows said I needed more free space to defrag. So I went back to the software list and saw that Avast was 499 megs, and since this is a computer that is not online I figured I'd go ahead and uninstall it. I ran the uninstall, rebooted like it requested, and now I have 715 megs of free space! Uninstalling Avast cost me close to 300 megs of the space I had before I removed it!!!!! Ran all kinds of disk cleanup software, my recycle bin is empty, and I can't find anymore temp folders to delete.
I'm getting desperate here, next step may be to format the HD if no one has any ideas.
TIA!
-HJR

Welcome to the forum:
Well, on my old XP to gain HD space I will/would 'delete' ( turn off and Reboot, then turn back on) "System Restore Points"
I would only do this when I was sure my OS was running smoothly and that I wouldn't need an immediate "Restore"
Uninstalling and Installing software can result in "System Restore Points" to be set. This can/does result in HD space being taken up.
Not sure if this will help you, just my personal computing experience.

[Aventador]

If all you had was 300megs free you really need more room no matter what issue you have. When Avast was uninstalled a System Restore point was created. Delete that restore point and presto................You will have your space back. Use CCleaner also. But honestly you need a bigger hard drive or get an external hard drive.