Rapidly decreasing harddrive space

Hi, I was recommended by a helper on the malware section to post my problem here.

My problem is that somehow all my harddrive space is being sapped away gradually from my C: I'm supposed to have around 3.5 GB of space left but then in a few minutes or so I'll have less than that until I have 0 GB. I'm not installing anything on my computer so I know thats not the issue.

Now I think my problems are getting worse. I was told that this isn't a malware issue but now my computer won't even startup correctly it will freeze upon login to windows.

Can anyone help me here?

 

Have you tried running hdd diagnostics to confirm that your hard disk does not have any issues.

 

Did you clean out your temp files as instructed in the malware thread?

Also have you downloaded a drive cleaner such as CCleaner to clean up your hard drive and then run a defrag on that drive using a defragger like IObit ?

 

You might like to try Scanner, by Steffen Gerlach, at http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/

It produces a circular pie chart for each drive connected to your system and soon shows what Folders / Files are hogging your hard drive space. When installed you can "mouse over" each Drive / Folder / File block to see their respective sizes.

See thumbnail for example of my Folders and File sizes. Windows, for example, is using over 4 gigs. Hope this helps. You will need to install this program to see the actual drop down values. Hope this helps. Bazza

 

Thanks for the advice, but I don't even seem to be able to boot up windows correctly to run any sort of program.

I've run Ccleaner and I've tried PC Doctor and Symantec diagnostics from their recovery disk all claiming to have fixed the harddrive problem but I still can't even start up correctly. (I'm using another computer to write these posts)

Also every time I reboot less and less loads (before all my desktop icons would load and some of my startup tray icons but now Its just loaded the wallpaper.)

 

How about booting in to safe mode so we can at least do some work on it?

 

Thanks again for the advice guys.

I've managed to fix some of the problems I had when I booted in safemode and ran CCleaner, now it seems I'm able to use my computer again. (FYI my computer that is fully functional is a desktop and the one that has problems is a laptop so I dont think i can just plug in the laptop harddrive into the desktop)

I'm currently running CCleaner and a Diskeepers defragmenter and hopefully that fixes my declining harddrive space

I ran the scanner that bigbazza recommended but I dont see how I can detect the problem with it

Any other suggestions? You guys sure its not some kind of virus, I've heard of viruses that could do something like this before.

 

The Authorized Malware Fighters already cleared you off malware in this thread http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=162940

Give us an update when you have run the cleaner and defragger. Once complete see how it functions in normal mode.

 

I ran the cleaner and defragmenter but I'm still having the same problems.

 

What processes do you have running? Perhaps post up a screenshot of this.

Also, if you physically remove your internet connection from your PC, does it continue to happen?

 

Yes i tested that even without internet connection, it still drains my harddrive.

I've made multiple images of the task manager that has all the running processes and I'm attaching it now

I've done what I think is a semi-temporary fix. I partitioned the free space on the C: away from the rest of it and renamed that drive as my "J:" This is how I'm able to retain what little space I have left.

 

Something else i noticed, it seems like everytime i restart my computer "resets" itself, for example, any new sites I add as bookmarks on firefox disappear the next time i run my computer as well as Chat history on Trillian. I think everything I do rolls back my actions at a restart. Even documents I modify or create disappear when I reboot like it never happened.

 

Do you have System Restore (SR) enabled on that drive? If so turn it off but before you do so check to see how much space it is using. You will need to make system files visible and check the size of the System Volume Information (SVI) located at root. With SR off the SVI folder should still exist but will be empty.

 

I still like WinDirStat Direct Download for looking at HD space used. It gives a block presentation of files. Some large blocks are system files but you can easily see which files are taking the most room, get there names and try to figure out why they are taking so much space.

 

Okay, so on safemode things got worse. The PC still ate up space and now after I came out of it, it still remains in safemode, aka most of my startup programs don't work, my wallpaper disappeared, and my desktop is blank.

Do you guys know whats making that happen?

 

I had a similar problem once from a failed run of Bootvis. I ran bootvis to make my system faster but during a run the pc crashed. It restarted ok and everything seemed fine but a few days later I got a disk full warning. It turned out that a log file that bootvis created was never deleted properly and would grow exponentially each time it triggered. When I finally found it, it was 125gig or so and I deleted it from safe mode but it started growing again. I finally found a post where they told me how to stop it by opening bootvis and making a selection in the options (something to do with not creating a the log file).

I looked up the answer I had saved, the log file is created in:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\logs
and it was called trace.log
and the fix was:
run BootVis again and click Trace-->Stop Tracing, the
file will now stop growing and may be safely deleted.

That may not be your specific problem but if your problem is not a system restore growth, then I would bet on a log file growing out of control.

 

All I get is a blue screen (NOT of death) in diagnostics mode with nothing on the desktop except My Bluetooth Places, IE, Firefox, and stuff I've loaded after I've had this problem. When I go to C:/Documents And Settings/Desktop, it appears as the desktop I had before all the problems I mentioned earlier. Everything new I make, like Firefox bookmarks, now stay, but I've still lost all the old settings I had.

All my programs either run their installer, or ask me to recomplete the initial setup.

My hard drive is still losing space.

 

Thanks Appzalien, I've stopped the HD loss, but everytime I restart, tracing is enabled again. All my other problems are still there.

 

here's a registry hack that works...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/
Control/WMI/GlobalLogger

Change the Start Key from 1 to 0, this should stop it from running.

 

Thanks everyone, it really was Bootvis that reduced my harddrive and its stopped now.

I also figured out what was wrong with my last account, all my stuff was created in a TEMP account which is why it disappeared as well. So what I did was created a new user account and I'm trying to remove my old account but its not working. I used the control panel and manually removed my old account that way but the documents and settings from the corrupt account are still there.

 

I get the error message "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents is not accessible. Access is denied"

I'll try the cleaning tools now. thanks!

 

Okay I've run all the different tools but I still don't seem to be able to delete the old documents folder

 

Also some of the applications I have won't work anymore most notably windows media player. Also the text files won't recognize that microsoft word was installed.

 

Update: I corrected the windows media problem, and I think I might know a way i can fix the access problem too.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/wi...=80004005&contextid=10030&originalid=80004005

This popped up after the installer failed, Does anyone know a similar way I can gain access to my other account files?