invisible files taking up space

i recently formatted my 20gb partition on my 100gb drive and reinstalled winxp on it. I left the 80gb partition intact, it was simply a data drive, and i had a bunch of movies on there that i burned to dvd....so i then deleted them using shift delete, well now it says my movies folder on the 80gb drive has 37.7gigs in it, with 192 files and 7 folders, but i have no idea what any of that stuff is....how do i view it?....i could just delete the folder and then my problems would be solved...but i really want to know what is in it....how can i recover this info?

Tools->folder options->show hidden files and folders

It probably has some installation files and other garbage hidden. It may have also had a page file on it as well. My bet is your files are in a folder called recycler.

If there is nothing on the drive it wouldn't hurt to format it. Go into disk management and delete the partition and recreate it.

wow what a stupid thread, sorry i even posted this, a mod can delete it if they want, i forgot all hidden folders are disabled from view when u reinstall windows....so i showed hidden folders and found the folder that i had hidden quite a long time ago and forgotten about...sorry for the dumb thread

Im prettng sure having your hidden folders viewable slows down your windows preformance.

tyshy said:

wow what a stupid thread, sorry i even posted this, a mod can delete it if they want, i forgot all hidden folders are disabled from view when u reinstall windows....so i showed hidden folders and found the folder that i had hidden quite a long time ago and forgotten about...sorry for the dumb thread

Click to expand...

Not a stupid thread. You asked a legit question and you got a good answer. Maybe someone will be in need of the same answer down the road and benefit from it. Sometimes we all need a little insight on things we forget.

Sir. BOBSONATOR said:

Im prettng sure having your hidden folders viewable slows down your windows preformance.

Click to expand...

And you say that because? I always run having invisible files made visible and speed is not a problem.

It does add latency into the loading of folders. Not much since it does not take long to draw the folders on screen. Unless you have alot of folders or images that need to be drawn, you won't notice. Also having folders view in thumbnail will give a minor hit in load times. It gets even slower when you use background images for the folders. So in a way he is correct.

Easily corrected by using List View or Details View.