Where's the Free Space? 1

[BooYaKaSha]

Earlier today, after having my computer on for a few days, I began running out of space on my C: drive. I'm running XP, and C: is partitioned to about 15GB.

I was in the middle of downloading something, so I starting moving some files to another drive, erased all the temp stuff I could find, made sure Recycle Bin and Norton Protection was empty, even checked the System Volume Information folder, the Prefetch folder, etc. and found and erased an old dead pagefile that was 1.5 GB.

After doing all this (and probably erasing/moving about 4GB of stuff) the available space didn't change, and got to the point that it was down to 29.6 MB.

So I restarted the comp, and magically I suddenly have 4.1 GB of free space. So I moved all the stuff back to C: (about 1+ GB of stuff) and it's now up to 5.6 GB.

What the heck is going on here?

 

[pmonett]

Is your Windows System Performance set to manage virtual memory by the system ?
I suspect your swap file is playing a bloatware tune.
Go to your Control Panel, select the Performance tab and click the Virtual Memory button.
See what the parameters are - default is normally "handled by system", I think.
I have set my parameters to a fixed min/max size of 512MB, and I have no issues I am aware of.

Pascal.

 

[BooYaKaSha]

I have my swap set manually to D: at 1024MB min/max (I have 1 GB of ram so I chose this for no paricular reason)

I think some buggy prog may have used up all my memory one time and forced windows to "increase the size of your pagefile"

there was definitely no pagefile on C: (i got rid of the dead one) when the space was still not showing up...

 

[pmonett]

Interesting. So the page file is not the issue.
Well there goes my idea. I don't see why you had to reboot to get your free space back, normally I get an updated value in mere seconds after emptying the bin.
I hope someone else has a good idea.

Pascal.

 

[mpnut]

I would try running a Defrag and see what that does.

 

[heresahandle]

I have the same problem and I can't find any solutions. If I find anything I will be sure to post it here for you.

I'm using a PC at my office, so I'm trying to avoid formatting the drive.

 

[BooYaKaSha]

Well I ran defrag overnight, and now I have 9.33 GB of free space.

I always thought defrag wouldn't give you more reported space, just consilidate what you have. Am I wrong here?

 

[Gi2]

Don't know if this will help, but have you checked for viruses? There are a couple that Norton won't find. I would suggest doing a scan using AVG. I just reformatted a friends computer and I had the same problem. I think the name is the Wincha virus although I can't seem to find any info on it for you. It is a malicious program and what it did was use up all the free disk space intermittently as well as cause intermittent connection problems to the internet. What I did was checked the processes running and started to investigate each one I didn't understand. I think it was called HOSTDLL.exe. You won't have to format. Just end the process, use search for files and folder and delete the exe. Norton didnt' find it at all, but AVG found it right away. I really hope that helps as it frustrating. I would also be interested to know who your ISP is? Good luck!

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

 

[BooYaKaSha]

i dl'ed and ran AVG and it didn't find any viruses...
Thanks for the suggestion though...

My ISP is Roadrunner...

 

[jward52]

Fred Langa's column/e-zine has one twist on this subject -

http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-09-11.htm#9

Jim

 

[pmonett]

By the way, you wouldn't have System Restore activated, would you ?
I know that has a serious ability to devour disk space in the wierdest ways.

Pascal.

 

[BooYaKaSha]

JWARD:
That's interesting. I'm not running McAfee, but I am running Norton, which was mentioned in that same link. But nothing really conclusive either way.

PMONETT:
I'm running system restore. I checked the folder where all the files were stored (System Volume Info) and the space it was using up was not much.

The defrag thing is still intruiging me. I was using eMule at the time, which tends to create large files in hundreds of fragments when it downloads. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with it...