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Hard Drive full up, not malware caused


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#1
emufix

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Hi,

I'm having various problems with my HP laptop computer most likely caused by my Hard Drive fulling up. Thought is might be malware caused per this link link on the geekstogo malware forum a few days ago, Hard drive full up, malware caused?

My Hard Drive keeps fulling up when I'm not doing anything to cause it. Initially thought it was Windows restore as I was continually clearing it to make space on the hard drive. I turned it off and created 2 Gbs of space. Now it fulls down to 250 Mbs of space free. Windows is posssibly causing my hard drive to full up leaving no free space. If I delete files that space is quickly filled again by who knows what. Can you help me with this? I'd like to know what is filling my Hard Drive up with junk and how to fix it so I have free space again that doesn't get filled up with junk I don't want.

I recently installed Internet Explorer 9 so this may have changed windows settings. I also play windows flash browser games that may to hungry on system resources.

Problems happening at the moment. Hard Drive fills up so I have little freespace on hard Drive, like 53 Mbs. Computer then crashes. When I start it up again I get a message saying "HP battery alert" advising the battery is low and may need replacing. I use mains power all the time because my computer is almost two years old so unreliable.

When I playing flash browser game on Internet Explorer 9 from time to time my video driver crashes and then recovers. This may be caused by poor integration of Flash Player into Internet Explorer 9.

Can you help me with these problem?

Thanks,
Emufix
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#2
rshaffer61

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Go to Start then to Run
Type in compmgmt.msc and click Enter
On left side click on Disk Management
On right side you will see you hard drive.
Now I need you to take a screenshot and attach it to your next reply. Do the following to take a screenshot while the above is open and showing on your desktop.

To do a screenshot please have click on your Print Screen on your keyboard. It is normally the key above your number pad between the F12 key and the Scroll Lock key
Now go to Start and then to All Programs
Scroll to Accessories and then click on Paint
In the Empty White Area click and hold the CTRL key and then click the V
Go to the File option at the top and click on Save as
Save as file type JPEG and save it to your Desktop


Attach it to your next reply



Download and install Free Everest Home Edition
Open it.
1: In left pane expand Computer folder.
2: Click once on Summary
3: In upper menu, go Report
4: And then to Quick Report-Summary
5: Save it in text file, and paste it in your next post.
Click the + by computer, click on Sensor. Get a screenshot and post it so I can check your temps and voltages...


DO NOT INCLUDE ANYTHING UNDER THE LINE THAT SAYS "DEBUG- PCI"
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#3
Hadronn

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Problems happening at the moment. Hard Drive fills up so I have little freespace on hard Drive, like 53 Mbs. Computer then crashes. When I start it up again I get a message saying "HP battery alert" advising the battery is low and may need replacing. I use mains power all the time because my computer is almost two years old so unreliable.


HP laptops have their in-built program to keep track and check the lifespan of your batteries. You do not necessarily have to change them if you are always charging it at home and hardly bring them out. Just have to take note that the next time you bring your laptop out you will have a very short battery time.

There are ways to maintain your battery life like unplugging your charging cable when battery is full or just remove the battery and use your laptop with just the power cable. This will extend your battery lifespan.
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#4
emufix

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Hi rshaffer61,

Here is the Everest Report:

--------[ EVEREST Home Edition © 2003-2005 Lavalys, Inc. ]------------------------------------------------------------

Version EVEREST v2.20.405
Homepage http://www.lavalys.com/
Report Type Quick Report
Computer STEVE-PC
Generator Steve
Operating System Microsoft Windows Vista Home Edition 6.0.6002 (WinVista Beta)
Date 2011-04-30
Time 20:36


--------[ Summary ]-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Computer:
Operating System Microsoft Windows Vista Home Edition
OS Service Pack Service Pack 2
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
Computer Name STEVE-PC
User Name Steve

Motherboard:
CPU Type Unknown, 2000 MHz
Motherboard Name Wistron 303C
Motherboard Chipset Unknown
System Memory 2816 MB
BIOS Type Phoenix (12/23/08)

Display:
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G
Monitor Generic PnP Monitor [NoDB]

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter High Definition Audio Controller [NoDB]

Storage:
IDE Controller Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
IDE Controller Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller AQFE06RZ IDE Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller Microsoft iSCSI Initiator
Disk Drive ST9250320AS ATA Device (232 GB, IDE)
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T50L ATA Device
Optical Drive NMBCZMD JWXE7WPMN SCSI CdRom Device
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

Partitions:
C: (NTFS) 227604 MB (2147 MB free)
D: (NTFS) 10866 MB (1835 MB free)
Total Size 238470 MB (3982 MB free)

Input:
Keyboard Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard with HP QLB
Mouse Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad

Network:
Network Adapter Atheros AR5007 802.11b/g WiFi Adapter (192.168.1.93)
Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
Modem HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP

Peripherals:
Printer Microsoft XPS Document Writer
Printer Send To OneNote 2007
USB1 Controller Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller [NoDB]
USB1 Controller Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller [NoDB]
USB2 Controller Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller [NoDB]
USB2 Controller Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller [NoDB]
USB Device HP Webcam-101
USB Device Realtek USB 2.0 Card Reader
USB Device USB Composite Device
Battery Microsoft AC Adapter
Battery Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery

Problems & Suggestions:
Problem Disk free space is only 1% on drive C:.

Attached Thumbnails

  • Computer management scrshot.jpg
  • Everest sensor scrshot.jpg

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#5
emufix

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Hi Hadronn,

Thanks for the advice on the HP battery situation. I thought I should be able to use my computer problem free even without a functioning battery if it is connected to AC mains. Nice to know that this is the situation. I think the main reason my laptop is experiencing random shut downs is that it is full of two years worth of dust and so runs hot. It overheats when I use computer intensive processes like running youtube videos and then shuts down. I can only successfully start the computer up again after it has had a while to cool down.
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#6
rshaffer61

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I suggest getting a can of compressed air and blowing out all the vents.
You can take the covers off the hd and memory allowing you to blow those compartments out also.
Make sure you keep the laptop off any surface like aa towel blanket or anything that can stop the air flow under it.
You can also purchase a laptop cooler mat that will raise the laptop off the surface and has fans in it to blow cool air to the under side of the laptop. Something like this HERE is what I am suggesting.
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#7
emufix

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Hi rshaffer61,

Ok, I've clean the cooling fan by blowing the outlet vent with a hairdryer and sucked from the inlet vent with a vacumn cleaner at the same time. The computer seems to work better now and isn't so hot althrough it still gets quite warm.

So how do I fix my original problem of the incredible shrinking hard drive? Freespace still disappears from the harddrive. Never did get back all the space I created by deleting files.
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#8
rshaffer61

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DO you have movies, videos, pictures or music on your system?
Unused programs can be uninstalled.
Temp files need to be erased completely.
Download TFC by OldTimer to your desktop
  • Please double-click TFC.exe to run it. (Note: If you are running on Vista, right-click on the file and choose Run As Administrator).
  • It will close all programs when run, so make sure you have saved all your work before you begin.
  • Click the Start button to begin the process. Depending on how often you clean temp files, execution time should be anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or two. Let it run uninterrupted to completion.
  • Once it's finished it should reboot your machine. If it does not, please manually reboot the machine yourself to ensure a complete clean.



Background info courtesy of DonnaB Thank you


As for TFC, this is a tidbit of an article I found a while back by a MicroSoft MVP.

TFC (Temp File Cleaner) will clear out all temp folders for all user accounts (temp, IE temp, java, FF, Opera, Chrome, Safari), including Administrator, All Users, LocalService, NetworkService, and any other accounts in the user folder. It also cleans out the %systemroot%\temp folder and checks for .tmp files in the %systemdrive% root folder, %systemroot%, and the system32 folder (both 32bit and 64bit on 64bit OSs). It shows the amount removed for each location found (in bytes) and the total removed (in MB).

Before running, it will stop Explorer and all other running applications. When finished, if a reboot is required the user must reboot to finish clearing any in-use temp files.
-- TFC only cleans temp folders.
-- TFC will not clean URL history, prefetch, or cookies. Depending on how often someone cleans their temp folders, their system hardware, and how many accounts are present, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more. TFC will completely clear all temp files where other temp file cleaners may fail.



Download Auslogics Defrag from the link in my signature below. Auslogics Defrag in my opinion is better because:

It does a more comprehensive job at Defragging
It will actually show you what it is doing
At the end of working it will show you how much speed you picked up
You can view a online log of the files that Auslogics defragged
Please do not run any other Auslogics programs other then this one as they may cause unwanted results.
http://auslogics.com...defrag/download
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#9
rshaffer61

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Are you still having problems with your issue?
It has been 26 days since your last response and I was wondering if the issue has been resolved?
If so can you explain how it was resolved so others may be able to fix it if they have the same issue.
If not please let us know and we can continue with helping you to resolve the issue.
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#10
emufix

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Nothing is fixed.

It's 2011 and no one managed to answer the famous question "What happened to my hard drive?".

Now I'm having problems with flash games not loading up. Probably an issue with Windows allocating tempary drive space. Who knows, I won't.

I'll have a look and see whether my rubbish computer can still function and come back with a list of what is wrong with it.
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#11
devper94

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Open a Command Prompt as Administrator then type:
vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /all
Reboot.
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#12
rshaffer61

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Did you do the instructions from my post 8 and did it reclaim your hd space?
The other possible cause of this could be a bloatware infection that you may not be aware of.
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#13
emufix

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Any ideas for how I can see what my hard drive is being taken up with? i.e. most recent files added or modified in the last two week and the size of the files on the harddrive. That would be good. I want to understand what is happening to my hardrive so I can then fix it.

Thanks again,
Emufix.
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#14
rshaffer61

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Have you done the instructions from post 8 and post 11?
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#15
emufix

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Hi,

Major problems here.

I cleared the temp per first part of post 8. I've not defrag the harddrive per the second part of post 8.
I tried post 11 and it didn't work,

Given the amount of time that has pass I think I need to post a new post on the forum. Problem was NEVER solved and now it is back with avenance.
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