I have my own pc that I have in my room. No one uses it except me. I had 5 GB left in my hard drive earlier today. But in the evenining I have only 64 Kb left. I have nothing left! I removed 15 mb of files in my computer, so then I checked out the c drive to see amount of space left. It said 15 mb left. Fine..Then one minute later it went down to 4 mb then to 64 kb. Now it's jumping every few minutes from 64 to 249 to 128. And so on. Is there a program I can get to get restore my hard drive space. I used AVG 6.0 and norton antivirus but it says that I have no virus's. What should I do? I tried disk defrag, but it required at least 15% disk space. It said I have 0%. I already got rid of files that I used but can't afford to get rid of more. I did disk clean up, but I gained nothing from that. Any other suggestions are welcome.
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What is eating my hard drive?
- Thread starter mike718
- Start date
CitrixEngineer
Technical User
Couple of suggestions;
Could be a build-up of temp files; Right Click My Computer, and choose Search. In the search for Files and Folders window, enter *.tmp. This may take a while, and may turn up loads of files. These can all be deleted.
Also use the advanced option of Search to locate files >10Mb (or so). Examine these, and if you can safely identify any as files you don't want, then delete or move them. If you don't know what they are, leave them!
Set the Virtual memory settings to be the same (Max and Min) as the amount of RAM you have. By default, min will be 0 and max will be however much disk space you have. This variable amount COULD be what is causing the problems you are having. 5Gb is a LOT of space to suddenly lose, so doubt it, however.
Disk cleanup is not very efficient - I've been using a program with the auspicious name "Tweak XP" for a while now - and it's really good at clearing out unused temp files, including IE's. There are also Win 95, 98 and ME versions
Hope these suggestions help CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
Could be a build-up of temp files; Right Click My Computer, and choose Search. In the search for Files and Folders window, enter *.tmp. This may take a while, and may turn up loads of files. These can all be deleted.
Also use the advanced option of Search to locate files >10Mb (or so). Examine these, and if you can safely identify any as files you don't want, then delete or move them. If you don't know what they are, leave them!
Set the Virtual memory settings to be the same (Max and Min) as the amount of RAM you have. By default, min will be 0 and max will be however much disk space you have. This variable amount COULD be what is causing the problems you are having. 5Gb is a LOT of space to suddenly lose, so doubt it, however.
Disk cleanup is not very efficient - I've been using a program with the auspicious name "Tweak XP" for a while now - and it's really good at clearing out unused temp files, including IE's. There are also Win 95, 98 and ME versions
Hope these suggestions help CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
If you're sure its NOT a virus, check what processes you have running (may be something has set itself to start with windows which is filling your filestore - because from what you say there is something actively filling filestore). You don't say what operating system but Ctrl+Alt+Del will give you list of running processes on 9x/ME, task manager on XP and option to run task manager on NT/2K. Msconfig (98/ME/XP) lets you see what's running at start up. Startup Manager ( will allow you to check/update this on any windows system. has a utility called filemon which monitors all file accesses on the PC (and tells you which process is using them). You could run that and check for lots of file creates.
Finally - if you use the search option to find all files up to one day old (ie, recent), you should get list of files which are being created - make sure 'show hidden & system files' is enabled - as there must be new files to be taking up the space.
Finally - if you use the search option to find all files up to one day old (ie, recent), you should get list of files which are being created - make sure 'show hidden & system files' is enabled - as there must be new files to be taking up the space.
- Thread starter
- #4
I'm using windows 2000. I tried to change my virual memory. My initial size is 192mb and my maximum size is 384mb. But i get an error saying there is not enough memory whenever I put a initial size higher or lower. Last time I check i now have 0 bytes left. I deleted all my temp files, internet files. But gained really nothing. Think i should reinstall my operating system and set up a new partion?
Please read my last post. Forget the page file & temp files - a process is filling your hard drive (5GB disappears!?). You need to find and stop it. Then remove the rubbish its created.
PS. Yes, you could backup, format & reinstall - see if it happens again!
PS. Yes, you could backup, format & reinstall - see if it happens again!
Just a thought, but make sure that you have the latest antivirus updates downlaoded and installed. i've worked with many people whose PC's have had symptoms of a virus but its users swear they don't have a virus because they ran Norton and it didn't detect any viruses. I'll then check to see when they last installed virus updates, and in many cases, their updates are over a year old. After installing the latest updates, I'll then run Norton, and in a lot of cases, it detects viruses and removes them from their system.
jeremybarker
Technical User
Another thought, perform a search for "log" might be a program creating log files out of control. Check event viewer under administrative tools and see what size is set for each of them, if its more than 512kb, select delete items as needed and adjust to a smaller size.
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