difference in hard disk space

hi experts
i am facing a problem with system formatting. recently i have formatted two systems simultaneously with windows xp as operating systems.
both the system configuration are the same expect for the ram.
one system has 256mb and other 1.3gb.after formatting one system has ocupied 2.5gb of space in C drive (the one with256mb ram) the other has occupied nearly 4.3 gb of hard disk space.when i see the properties of program files , document and settings and win nt its not showing more than 1gb of space.
Can anybody please help me out of this problem .where the extra space is being utilised.

Thanks in advance
Ansari
systems administrator
miraclesoft
india.

Are they both the exact same copy of XP? Were updates installed on the one PC and not the other?

The one occupying 4.3 GB seems like it has SP2 installed.

yeah that sounds like it... does one have any extra programs that the other one doesent ??

plus

get another stick of ram 256mb isnt enough to run it at a decent speed

Yes both the copies are of the same version.and this problem occoured as soon as i have finished formatting.i have not installed updates also.both the systems are having service pack2.

I just want to make sure that I am understanding you correctly.

You formatted and installed XP on two different machines with similar hardware. One PC shows 2.5GB used and the other shows 4.3GB used.

If you are using the exact same install disk, this should not happen. What it looks like to me is that one disk is just XP and the other is XP with SP2 already built in. And if you are using the same disk to install on both machines then this shouldn't happen at all (plus it is against MS policy to do that)

in your "Documents and settings folder" make it sureshows hidden folders then right click properties the folder to see how much space it takes up, usually i find that folder hides alot of stuff/ up to 5 gigs but it doesnt always show in windows even when ya set it to show hidden. so it do it through dos prompt, (incase ya didnt know) click start, goto run, type cmd when ur in dos prompt you'll start out in the documents and settings folder so type cd.. then type dir/a/s and it'll hopefully display any hidden files in that directory


hopefully thats the problem

or maybe one of your machines is usingmore virtual memory then the other? try the same thing in windows directory as well as c: