Friend can't install FFXIV: "Not enough free disk space"

[Raist]

Windows does some strange things sometimes. A few of the oddball scenarios I've seen with this type of message:

Run the installer with admin privileges. Problem apparently was more of an access issue than size. This can be tricky since some installers have an .MSI extension which doesn't have the right-click context menu to run as admin unless you create it manually. Can try "cheating" by launching from within an admin context: launch cmd prompt as admin and then CD to the folder and launch it, create a batch file that calls it and launch the batch file as admin, launch file explorer as an admine, etc.

Standalone installer was on a removable drive that either didn't have enough room for unpacking the files or it was otherwise unable to write to the drive (like a CD or DVD). The installer was set to unpack the temp files to the source drive instead of one of the Windows temporary locations. Copying the installer to the hard drive resolved it. Seen intermittent shorts in cables/connectors cause issues as well.

Installing from a network drive. Unreliable communications can cause all kinds of problems. Copied installer to local drive and no problems.

Shadowcopy failed because of limits set for system restore. Clearing old images (disk cleanup wizard) or adjusting the reserved space resolved it.

Swapfile misbehaving. Corruption in file or auto-sizing just went AWOL. Gotta love Windows brain farts sometimes. Change system to run with no swap file and reboot (or rename the file and reboot) and then configure static size for the file, 2 or 3 times the size of physical memory installed. Basically, wanting to create a fresh, static sized file to use.

Windows temp files out of hand. Tons of small files for things like web browser cache and such making a mess in the MFT and all. Clean up temp files (disk cleanup wizard or a tool like ccleaner can streamline it some) and the run chkdsk /f on the drive to repair file system errors. Sometimes the /r switch was warranted as there were bad sectors.