Can I clear up space on my disk drive if I'm stuck on bsod?

Question

I'm stuck in a bsod loop and I'm pretty sure the reason it started in the first place was because my pc was disconnected from the power supply. Start-up repair would probably be able to fix this, unfortunately every time I try it it gets as far as "diagnosing your pc" before it sends me back to the beginning. I've read that having not enough space on your disk drive can cause issues with start-up repair and I only have about 2.4gb left on it so I'm fairly certain that's why it won't work. My problem, however, is that I can't find a way to clear up space in my current situation, it won't restart properly to access start-up settings so I can try going into safe mode or something. If there's a way I can go into safe mode or empty my recycle bin using command prompt or something that would be extremely helpful.

Answer 1

Hi, I am Dave, I will help you with this.

Can you get into the Recovery Environment using these steps to access Safe Mode?

Start your PC, just as Windows attempts to load (spinning dots), press and hold Power Button for 5 - 10 seconds to perform a Hard Shut Down

Do this twice

On the third start Windows will boot into the Recovery Environment and from there you can access System Repair, Safe Mode, Command Prompt... etc.

Go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Option - Startup Settings and click Restart

Upon restart, press 5 to enter Safe Mode

Answer 2

Hi

Unfortunately, if I click restart from the start-up settings screen, it just takes me back to the beginning of the recovery environment upon restart and doesn't give me access to any of the options. The only thing that seems to function is the command prompt but none of the fixes that use it that I can find have worked for me.

Answer 3

In Command Prompt, type notepad.exe and press Enter.

The Notepad app should open.

In Notepad, select File - Open.

You should then be able to use the Open File Dialog like a small File Explorer to drag some of your data out onto a USB drive, to clear space on your drive.

Answer 4

Thank you so much, that actually seems to be working. Unfortunately I was a bit of an idiot; I figured out I could use the notepad to access my files earlier but I didn't think to move files. Instead I tried deleting them which didn't make any difference and I'm assuming that's because they just got sent to the recycle bin and are still taking up space. And now I can't find anything in the local disk that would be safe for me to move. I feel really dumb now because if I just thought to move them earlier this would probably be fixed. Is there no way I can empty the recycle bin using command prompt or something? If there's nothing else I can do, thanks for the help, I really appreciate it.

Answer 5

Try using this command to empty the recycle bin on the C drive.

rd /s /q C:$Recycle.bin