Losing HD Disk Space At A Fast Rate

Hi,

My computer's hard drive has less disk space every time I log on! I have an older machine that runs Win XP & had a small amount of storage space available of around 7 GB about a month or so ago on the small 37 GB HD that came installed with the computer. Then it dropped down to just over 2 GB today. About 4 days ago I had just over 5 GB. I've been saving practically everything to an external HD for at least 6-7 months now. I only save program files to my computer's HD now that the computer needs to run (like my AV program, various applications, etc). I've removed programs I no longer use, I've tried disk clean up, I defragmented the HD using Auslogic Defrag (the Defrag report says: Fragmentation Before 26.00%, Fragmentation After 25.92%), I used CCleaner & doing everything only freed up a tiny bit of space. I did a system restore to try to free up space. I did it to when I had at least 5 GB & it didn't free up any space. I just went back in & deleted more files off my hard drive & freed up nearly 5 GB of space but at the rate I'm losing disk space, I'm afraid in a few weeks I'll be completely out of disk space & won't be able to use my computer! I cannot afford a new HD at the moment. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Cynthia

 

Try Space Sniffer or WinDirStat. Either program will give you a visual representation of your file system with squares representing the files. Larger squares are larger files.

Chances are that you will see one really large square representing the file that is suddenly taking up the most space. If you don't recognize the file or want advice on whether or not it can be deleted post back. It is not recommended to delete anything in the WINDOWS folder but I doubt the culprit file will be located in that directory.

 

I had a problem like this while using ccleaner, and later found that ccleaner was the root of the problem, When you run ccleaner do you tick the wipe free space option? Try manually clearing temp files and prefetch, You can do this by going to start, RUN, type in temp, delete everything in that folder, then type in %temp% , delete everything in that folder as well, you could also try going to search and search for .tmp , you'll find all the temp files stored on your PC. On to clearing prefetch, Go to My computer, C: , WINDOWS , prefetch, delete everything in the prefetch folder, before you do all of this run all your programs like disk cleanup, ccleaner, defrag, ect, then do all of the above.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. It really helps to see your HD that way.

I noticed that the AVG9 antivirus is taking up the most space (just over 6 GB) & comes with the IEToolbar.dll that shows a new big 500+ MB toolbar dll every few days! It looks like it started on Christmas. I don't even use IE unless I absolutely have to. I installed AVG back around November. That may have been around the time I started losing disk space fast (but I can't say for sure). Could that be the culprit & how can I stop these 500+ MB IEToolbar.dll_1234556666777_f.dmp from eating up space every few days?

I've attached that portion of the report from Space Sniffer.

Thanks,
Cynthia

 

Do you have a program installed called BitDefender?

 

You can just delete the .dmp files. I don't know what is causing them. Try a post in the software forum something like "AVG9 creating 500mb .dmp files daily?". I see several people use AVG in that forum so they might be able to give you advice.

 

You might want to consider a lighter alternative to AVG. Avira AntiVir would be good and doesn't use nearly as much space.

 

I have been running Avira for the last 2-3 days (personal try out trial) and I agree plus it has a better detection rate than AVG imho and stopped some sneaky feral rouge app from starting that AVG never picked up on.

I'm really liking Avira and it has at least 2-3 less processors running.

 

Thanks Bold Eagle,

I paid (renewed AVG for 2 years) back on Oct. 29. After I found out what the problem was I Googled it & I'm not the only one having this problem. AVG is having me send them the files so they can take a look at it. I'd deleted all but the most recent one (which happened yesterday). So they may have the answer.

 

I'm glad to hear it is a problem with AVG and not some kind of malware hiding in that folder. Good job tracking sown the problem.

Let's see what AVG says.

 

That doesn't sound good at all if AVG can't isolate the problem possibly ask for a refund?

Just to emphasise how impressed I am with Avira detection rates it "stopped" this file in it's tracks and asked for action:

C:\System Volume Information\_restore{FADD62FA-01B5-4AE6-80B6-D32E966C7034}\RP18\A0008268.exe

We can see that the Malware had renamed itself as a "System Restore" file type and thus had eluded AVG previously (not sure for how long) but it is a ".exe" file type and not a restore folder!

I searched for the nasty and did indeed find it, to make sure I was not getting a "false positive" and have now removed it entirely.

Hopefully you can get some resolution from AVG.