hard drive is mysteriously filling up.

[Will]

every day, the available space on my HD is shrinking with seemingly no explanation. available space went from 1.3 gigs yesterday to 800 mb today. this has been happening slowly for a week or two.

however, when I select all the folders in C:, it only adds up to about 6 gigs. I KNOW I don't have 32 gigs of stuff on here. there were more than 10 gigs free last month.

I tried unchecking the "hide hidden folders" option, thinking someone in my family might have a massive porn stash or something, but no, just the standard system files showed up.

I then did a search on "files modified in the last day" and even that seemed to be in order.

as an experiment, I turned off my modem and just let the computer sit for a few minutes. I lost 3mb in 5 minutes. :(

now I'm relatively certain it's a virus, but I'm pretty careful about what I download, and I can't remember downloading anything remotely suspicious at all recently. I don't even have Kazaa or anything like that installed. the closest is an FTP program (smartFTP), but even with that, I only download music or an occasional movie.

does anyone know what the problem could be?

sys info-
compaq presario 5000T
windows ME (I know, I know. family computer)
376mb RAM

[quagsire]

We had a problem at work where MSN downloaded about 150MB per day on all the people's PCs that use MSN. Just downloaded a patch and the problem went away.

[beely]

i guess your computer have ben infested by virus. try to check out for virusses with anti-virus program. OR the best solution is FORMAT your HD and then install again your OS

[OneStiffRod]

Try this first - www.winguides.com dwnld the RegCleaner and see if that fixes your prob.

Try searching for files larger than 100MB's if it's a virus it would probably be adding junk to a file to use up your disk space.

Here's another goto START->Program->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Cleanup.

On your Folder TOOLS mark the check box that says "show system files and folders" it may be that your swap file is set to be extremely large.

[beely]

Originally posted by OneStiffRod
Try this first - www.winguides.com dwnld the RegCleaner and see if that fixes your prob.

Try searching for files larger than 100MB's if it's a virus it would probably be adding junk to a file to use up your disk space.

Here's another goto START->Program->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Cleanup.

On your Folder TOOLS mark the check box that says "show system files and folders" it may be that your swap file is set to be extremely large.

it's not a junk files problem. the problem said that the space remaining sometimes change very high and sometimes very low. somtimes invalid value. i guess that's computer virus that annoying the system files.

[RoD]

>>it's not a junk files problem. the problem said that the space remaining sometimes change very high and sometimes very low. somtimes invalid value. i guess that's computer virus that annoying the system files.

It very well could be a junk file problem, or it may not be. But at this point he should persue all possibilities.

[Eibro]

http://housecall.antivirus.com
Scan yourself, if you already haven't.
Or it could be your swap file growing larger... how much RAM do you have?

[kevinalm]

Have you run scandisk including a surface scan lately? Also, don't forget to empty recycle bin. An often overlooked way to free hd space is to look for obsolete temp files. Some apps don't clean up after themselves very well.

Some variation in free space is normal, (temporary internet cache, variable swap file size, etc.) but your's does seem excessive.

[TheUnheardHuman]

im having a similar problem. i firts noticed after isntalling linux on my second hard drive. hard drive a should have like 19 gigs total. but now i hvae 18 gigs total. i think my swap file is growing. i got 511 megs of ram. anything to suggest? my norton anti-virus program didnt pick up any evil

[Will]

the virus scan didn't turn up anything. I tried running scandisk just now, but, hilariously, it couldn't complete because "windows or another program is writing to the disk." great.

today when I turned the comp. back on, I noticed that the available space actually increased up to around 611 mb (from around 570 the night before).

EDIT part 2: I believe I've solved the mystery. I ran "system information," and my virtual memory is obscenely high. Total Virtual Memory = 902 mb. Available Virtual Memory = 514 mb. Page File Space = 527 mb. now, on to the difficult part: what can I do about this and/or how do I do it?

[eats only heads]

get addaware and run that, run msconfig and disable any unneeded start up stuff. Run the defragment program in safe mode. Also there is something called slack which takes up your harddrive for apperently no reason. It is also a good idea to deleate your windows folder and reistall windows every once any a while. Also if you have to hardrives back up your files on one and format the other, then repeate the process with the other one. I belive windows stores your internet history in a really hidden file so as to make it easier for crackers to spy on you. There is a way to delete this but if nothing else formating should work.

[kevinalm]

As I've always said, windows wouldn't know what to do with virtual memory if it bit it in the...

The best thing to do is to setup a fixed size permanent swap file.

my computer > control panel > system

Select performance tab.
Select virtual memory.

Select Let me specify my own...

Set minimum and maximum to the same size. It should be 2 to 3 times the installed ram.

Click OK.