[PhotoBoy]

Hello everyone.

Had a malware problem recently, and during it's removal was able to find out about Clean Up and other such programs.

Anyway, rather than gain disc space I'm losing it rapidly, and I'm mystified. The computer is fine otherwise.

It's an 80 gig drive on a Dell Inspiron 8600, and a week ago my disc space went from 12% left to 10%. Now I only have a 1 gig of space left which is less than 1%.

I'm a photographer and had about 22 gigs worth of images on there a month ago, but suddenly it's over 36 gigs, which doesnt make sense seeing as I have probably loaded around 1 gigabyte in that time. The My Docs folder is at 36 gigs by the way, which includes text documents too.

Photoshop is the biggest program I have at about 1 gig of disc space, but allowing for programs and images, does anyone have any idea where my other 30 gigabytes of space has gone?!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Advertisements]

ya could buy another hard drive or start burning disks dvd/cd's to save space on your computer.

[RogueComGeek]

ya could buy another hard drive or start burning disks dvd/cd's to save space on your computer.

[PhotoBoy]

Thanks, but I need to find out where the disc space is 'going'.

[dagger]

What does it say when you try to run the disk defragmenter?

[PhotoBoy]

Thanks Dagger.

It's telling me it needs at least 15% space to defragment.

I deleted a lot a of stuff to create space just so the computer keeps functioning, because with it myteriously 'filling up' it's sure to quit at some point.

I was wondering if files were being duplicated somehow, and taking up additional space. I'm baffled actually.

Anyway, thanks again.

[Numb Remxed]

Download Cleanup to clean out your internet cache and temporary files: http://www.geekstogo...tion=show&id=49

[warriorscot]

Sounds dodgy it might be malware have you spoke to the malware guys they can help you check your pc.

[PhotoBoy]

Thanks folks.

Have run Clean Up several times, and have just got rid of my malware problem.

Thorough scans, especially Kaspersky, show that the machine is clean now.

[PhotoBoy]

UPDATE:

OK, I have been monitoring the hard drive capacity closely since last night, and it is already showing some bizarre behavior:

Sept 11th:
19.5 GB space left

Sept 12th:
18.7 GB at boot-up this morning
18.0 GB after re-boot into safe mode to do more malware scans [nowt btw]
16.5 GB after uninstalling piece of hardware, and re-booting

HEEEELLLLPPPP!!!

Edited by PhotoBoy, 12 September 2005 - 12:07 PM.

[Numb Remxed]

post a hijackthis log in the malware removal forum just to see if any of the staff see any malware.

[PhotoBoy]

OK, thanks.

Will do.

[vwccompguy]

SOLUTION!!!!!



Okay it turns out this problem is caused by Norton Anti-Virus getting corrupted and generating files in the windows/temp folder.

To resolve this issue you need to uninstall NAV and reinstall it. If your computer is running to slow to actually make a normal boot then you will need to boot into safe mode. (hit F-8 druring the boot process and then select safe mode from the menu) Once in safe mode navigate to the windows\temp folder and remove all files with in it. Then you have to choices you can either remove norton manually via directions found on there website depending on what version you have. or you can go to start -> run -> then type 'MSCONFIG' Select the startup tab and disable all norton/symantec products from startup and the services. Doing this should enable to restart your machine in normal mode without norton filling your hard drive up with junk files. When it comes back up in normal mode uninstall Symantec products via add/remove programs list. If this fails you will have to revert to uninstalling it manually.

After you get norton uninstalled reinstall it and you may need to re clear out that temp folder just to be sure that there are no more files hanging around. I would also suggest doing all of this while unplugged from the internet and doing a full virus scan and spyware scan after completion just to ensure that everything is gone.

Let me know if anyone else has any sucess with this it has worked on 2 student computers so far. I looked all over and couldn't find an answer even symantec told me that they couldn't help me. This is the only solution that I know of short from reformating the troubled machine.

[tennisboy]

i have the exact same problem!!! but i have trend micro virus scanner? should i follow your procedure?

[PhotoBoy]

Mmmmmm, I took this issue over to the malware forum as suggested, and we've been going through steps over there.

As it happens though, Norton was uninstalled and reinstalled on September 3rd, whoch was a few days before I noticed this problem.

The Norton folk added 8 months to my subscription, but the program is so [bleep] buggy I've come to the point where I don't think it's worth the trouble, and would rather pay another company just to stay away from Norton.

And with just 1.62 gigs of disc space left I'm doubly desperate now, and appreciate the the suggestion!

[PhotoBoy]

OK, I uninstalled Norton, and it didn't go away even after manually going after all their files, and running CCleaner and so on. It was a great idea though.

What finally 'made it happen' for me was to turn off System Restore in XP, reboot, and turn it on again. Voila!

Even though Norton gave me a full year on my subscription recently, it's gone to the great software bucket in the sky, because looking back I found myself trying to find fixes to problems created by them waaaay too often.