Hello,
I uninstalled WoW last night but the disk space taken by WoW is still occupied by it.
I have tried emptying my recycle bin, using CCleaner, restarting my computer, going to the game’s (pre-uninstalled) directory in the drive it was installed and deleting any remnants of WoW - I cannot find any actual files taking the space anywhere but my computer insists that the space is still taken.
I don’t understand this and I have no idea what to do about it anymore. I tried everything I could think of.
This sounds like a long-standing bug/quirk of Windows - reports of it go back for over a decade, and in fact may even go back well into the DOS age. The actual root cause is pretty murky and in fact there may be multiple different problems that lead to this situation, but the result is usually that disk space that was previously occupied remains being seen as such by the OS despite the data having been removed. This is of course rather notable if what was removed happened to be a fairly big game like WoW. 
In some cases running a “Defragmentation” on the drive which is accessible via the properties-menu (right-click the drive icon in the explorer overview) has been reported to help with this, but defragmentation has a somewhat mixed reputation when it comes to SSDs as those have a limited amount of read/write cycles (which the defrag-process will consume quite a fair bit of). If you’re using a classic HDD it should however be no problem to give this a try.
There are other suggested fixes for this floating around the interwebs, ranging from formatting the drive to manually re-mounting it via specific disk utilities, but that’d go beyond the scope of what we can really offer advice on.
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…Well, that sucks. Thanks for the reply, I tried defragmentation and it didn’t help. I’ll be looking into formatting but… This is really… Uughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Did you run registry cleanup in CCleaner? maybe there is a file in your registry which is “telling” your system that this space is still taken?
Now it’s just weirder.
According to the software you linked, all the numbers are accounted for down to the last KB and there are no hidden files taking the space.
BUT - and this is where I’m officially living the most underwhelming episode of The Twilight Zone - I know for a fact that this cannot be true. For a fact.
I clearly remember how much space I had before I installed WoW (I don’t remember the exact number but I know it was well over 220+ GB - well above that, I remember this because I remember seeing that number, noting that I was above 200) and I didn’t install or add anything after WoW. I only had WoW installed for a few days, during which I changed nothing and added nothing. I didn’t even load up my Steam or downloaded any updates or anything.
After I had WoW installed I had 195 GB. After I uninstalled WoW I still had 195.
All the numbers are still accounted for - this is the crazy part (or the part where the Shayamalan twist kicks in: I was the crazy all along!): they all add up.
…What.
Actually what. I know this can’t be true, though. I looked at the number before the installation, after the uninstallation and right now and it cannot make sense.
Help. I don’t know what’s real anymore.
Am I crazy? Can this happen somehow!? WHAT IS REAL!?
If you have windows 10 i think there is possibility to bring system to factory settings without losing any data, if it’s system failure then it should help… I think it’s not so high price to prove yourself you are sane
Edit: Are you sure this space is not reserved for any app which is paused at downloading? Steam does reserve space, World of Warcraft, Classic do also iirc.
