Dublin wrote

justeve wrote Just clear some system restore points and that will free a decent amount of space.
Curiously did you upgrade to windows 8 or do a fresh install of 8.

I did an upgrade,I still have windows 7 (old) files on it but don't want to risk deleting if I'm not supposed to.
-Dublin

all of the above are great but I use a program called treesize (free program) and it scans your entire hard drive for files and finds what's taking up the most space. it may not find recovery files but it does show you what is taking up alot of space that you should most likely delete.

CCleaner is the best thing you can get for free, i have it and its 100% safe and free and does its job well

windows.old files are there in case you forgot to back up your files. You can delete them if you need to, if you want to keep certain items, drag them into your current Documents folder. then delete the rest.

There is a tool that comes installed on your computer called "Disk Cleanup"

The tool is used to clean up your HDD, and free diskspace.

To access it, Right click on your HDD, and press "Properties" then click on the "Manage" tab and press "Disk Cleanup"