Question

How to search for the largest files on my computer vista?

Answer 1

To find the largest files on your computer using Explorer, open Computer and click up in the search box. When you click inside of it, a little window pops up below with a list of your recent searches and then a add search filter option.

Go ahead and click on Size and then you’ll get another menu with a couple of options:

Go ahead and pick something like Large, Huge or Gigantic otherwise you will get a list of way too many files. If you just want to see larger files, I suggest choosing huge or gigantic. Then just press enter without typing in anything else.

Alternatively, drop to command prompt type cd\

dir /s/o:s to get a listing in ascending order.

for descending order dir /s/o:-s

Since there might be a lot of files you might want to pipe it into a text file, simply add > largefiles.txt

dir /s/o:-s  > c:\temp\largefiles.txt    (the c:\temp directory must exist, if not the command will fail. Once you're on the root with cd\ just create the temp directory with md c:\temp or via the GUI, alternatively, again add & md c:\temp into the dir command)

If you want to get fancy you can also just open the results with the & 

dir /s/o:-s  > c:\temp\largefiles.txt & notepad c:\temp\largefiles.txt

Please Note:

(the c:\temp directory must exist, if not the command will fail. Once you're on the root with cd\ just create the temp directory with md c:\temp or via the GUI, alternatively, again add & md c:\temp into the dir command)

md c:\temp\ & dir /s/o:-s  > c:\temp\largefiles.txt & notepad c:\temp\largefiles.txt