Hard disk full and memory is low. cannot install updates

Check your Filesystem structure. you may have a limited /home or any filesystem or also you have a small SWAP space
run this in your terminal

df -h

or you can run this

df -h | grep 100%

The first command will list all your filesystem and its Utilization look if you have a 100% or near 100% Utilization
The Last command will output any Filesystem that is 100% used

if you have a filesystem near 100% then that may cause the Bottle Neck

If thats the case you may either resize your Filesystem or make backups or create a SYM link to a Filesystem that you have access

also you may have a low SWAP space
check your swap space by running this command

swapon -s

it will output your swap size in KB and the Location.
Ideally your SWAP size must be 2.5x the amount of RAM you have.

so if you have 1Gb then SWAP size must be near the 2.5 GB size.

if you have a Low swap size then you should resize it

During bootup do you get a lot of Ubuntu options to boot into?

If so then try the 2nd Ubuntu one, this should have "recovery mode" near the end of the line. The first option to try is the "clear some space" and then try "Repair broken Packages", the "fsck Check and repair partition" is good if you can leave it long enough to complete. It should only take 15mins or so. Finally do the "Resume normal boot" at the top.

Mostly it is often caused by people not emptying their waste-bin so go down to the icon at the bottom right on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and left-click to see what's in there or right-click it so that you can empty it without looking.

It's also worth emptying the waste-bin in your emailing program. Use the File menu or whichever to allow the program to "compact folders".

Now go to the top taskbar and click on

System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager

it asks for your normal user password, not your SuperUser/Root one. In there click on the menu at the top

Settings - Preferences - Files - "Delete Cached Package Files"

While you are in Synaptic you could complete your updates by clicking on "Mark all updates" button and then "Apply". You might want to "Delete Cached Package Files" again after doing that ;)

Usually when people say 'memory' they mean Ram whereas you are talking about Hard-drive space which is more usually called 'storage space' or something. Form the sound of it i think you only have one option for booting into Ubuntu and one for Windows? If so then it's only that first "recovery mode" option that you wont be able to use. The rest of it should work fine but please let us know because there might be other things we could suggest to help you improve your system quite a bit.

I hope this helps!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

I think 2.5 x Ram is quite high. It's handy to have plenty of space for it but it only really needs to be about the same as Ram. 2xRam is fine. But it also depends how much Ram you have and whether you use hibernate/sleep/suspend modes. If you don't use those modes and have over 2Gb Ram then you probably wont ever need a swap space at all, unless you have multiple monitors and have some heavy gaming and HDTV multimedia with full desktop effects all going on a lot at the same time in virtual machines lol. On the other hand with 2Gb or less then it's wise to set your swap to be slightly higher than you really need so that if/when you get some more then you don't have to worry about increasing your swap space at all ;) Hmmm, 2.5 sounds good to me now ;) heheheh

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

I read the SWAP faq. now I know im outdated. Hehehe.

Lol, it pays to be a noob sometimes ;)) Works well for me anyway ;)

I learned from you too btw. I have no idea what to do on the command-line but i like picking things up this way. When there's a clearly identified need and a good answer it's easier for me to remember, otherwise my eyes just glaze over.

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)