Helmut said:
Quite simple, far too small a HDD/SSD on purchase. 256 GB is simply not enough. Even 5 years ago.
Windows and Applications increase in their installed size every year. One of mine is 5x larger in just 3 years (15 GB to currently 80 GB). Virtually every application is at least 2x larger.
256GB is fine if you have another drive. I have a 180GB SSD as the system drive of which 120GB is free. I have a lot of stuff installed but large games and user files are ona separate large HDD.