I have an Acer Aspire 5315 bought in 2007 operating Vista Basic,32 bit operating system?

Vista has a habit of keeping loads of bits and pieces, 15% of the space will be used for System Restore Points, it also keeps copies of all the update files meaning the Windows folder often reaches 13 or 14Gb on its own.

From your two partitions I would suggest you have an 80Gb drive, 13Gb Acer will have reserved for the hidden partition, if you made the Acer recommended back up discs you can actually delete this partition and re-use the space (just don't loose the CDs)

You can use the disk clean up options sugested buy Derek C, this will clear a lot of the rubbish, download this small file and run once a week to clear out the basic rubbish that builds up.

http://majorgeeks.com/ATF_Cleaner_d4949.html

you can reduce the size of the system restore points in Vista but have to go through the command line to do it, so if you are feeling brave have a go at this.

To Change the size - right click and open the command prompt found in Start > Programs > accessories) and run as Administrator. Then use the following command to change the size of System Restore in Windows Vista:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=4GB

This would change the allocated size of System Restore on drive C: for drive C: to 4 gigabytes which is more than enough. Then close the open window and reboot.

domicile windows XP has been out long sufficient that the appliance dirvers and interfaces are extremely good. provided that Vista grow to be released, all OEM providers are making use of it. it in all fairness good yet nevertheless has some issues. SP1 launch ought to make it very solid. some providers don't have Vista updates accessible yet extra are popping out daily. Microsoft would be dropping all help on XP in 4 years or much less. the only producer i comprehend of which will sell a sparkling gadget with XP is Dell. in case you get a sparkling gadget, make advantageous that's definitely equipped with processor speed and RAM to help Vista. Toshiba is a suitable gadget in laptops, yet could be costly in case you do no longer seize them on sale. circulate to a important save and attempt the structures. Do you like the feel of the keyboard, does the reveal screen look sturdy, does it have the extras you like. there will be some great sales appropriate till now college and at exertions Day. do no longer overlook to checkout the workplace grant shops. they on occasion are extremely value aggressive. you are able to discover the Dell products at Wal-Mart. that's beneficial to circulate to the Microsoft internet site and look on the gadget standards fot distinctive Vista variations. i comprehend that's long yet had to cover each thing.

i see one big problem you have it is called norton internet security,norton is known

for being a resource hog and can also crash computers,norton crashed one of my

earlier computers,Mcaffee is no better,i would not have either one on any of my computers.when the time comes to renew norton dump it and go with some good free stuff that will

not slow your computer down like avg,avast, superantispyeware,malwarebytes and a

good firewall,the free stuff mentioned are not resource hogs.norton and mcaffee

may be the two best known security packages,but a lot of people on here wont

have them on there computers. sorry for being rude or sarcastic.

Just do a little bit of house keeping e.g :-

.

Go; Start; All programs; Accessories; System tools; Disk cleanup; All files; Vista C;/; Enter, wait let it do its stuff then OK; Delete Files....Done..... don't be afraid to do this

i would imagine back up files, shadow, norton, widows are hogging a lot, first download ccleaner(free) run and see how much free space you get back, the rest gets more complicated but not that much you dont sound daft, have a look here

http://oreilly.com/pub/a/windows/2007/03/06/cleani...

just a tip turn off vista updates

I recommend that you install CCleaner http://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER and run a scan.

The full system scan scans all files, including Windows system files, temporary files etc. it's common to show lots of items.