Hard Drive Full All Of A Sudden

I have windows xp, home edition. My computer is 20gb, and i checked the hard drive for space about a month ago, i had more than 50 percent space left. I do not have many programs installed on my PC, nor do i have many video or audio files. The only new program i have added to my pc lately was an HP printer. Over the last week, i noticed that my pc has been running slow. Normally, i'd click on the 'my pictures' folder, and the thumbnails would pop up immediately. Now, it takes a 2-3 minutes for the thumbs to generate, and i have not added any more pictures to the album. Everything seems to be taking much longer, and i have run adware scans and virus scans (avg) to see if that was the problem. I have deleted all the files that the programs suggested, and still it is slow as hell. I checked the properties on the hard drive yesterday, and i have less than 1 gb of space left. I dont know what is filling up the hard drive, i even went to 'my computer' and used the 'add/remove' utility to take out rarely used programs, and it didnt free up any space. Does anyone have any suggestions? thanks in advance

 

Any chance that you recently saved some bodaciously huge pictures?

20GB isn't all that much if you save pictures and MUSIC like some of my customers...and they don't usually realize that they are using as much space as they are. Try a properties check (right click on the C: drive in My Computer) and see what you find...

 

Have you emptied the Re-cycle bin, cleared out the temporary internet files, deleted all .tmp files (that aren't the current date), checked to see what large files have been created in the last month?

 

yes, i have emptied the re-cycle bin, and cleared temporary internet files. I have not added any major pictures or music files in the last month. I just ran spyware doctor, and it is still running, it now says i have 385 infected files, but the scan is not complete yet. after it finishes, i will clear what they suggest and check the properties then. it seems to be spending a lot of time scanning the 'cookies' folder, there are more than 2000 files in it. I dont know if clearing that out would help the situation any.

 

Try looking at it with this http://www.snapfiles.com/get/jdiskreport.html
Then like suggested remove 'garbage files' get CCleaner or something like that..

 

Well most cookie files are only 1Kb so even with 2000 that's less than 2Mb.

And just because you haven't added any large files doesn't mean there aren't any. Did you actually check?

But let spyware doctor finish its thing then see what the situation is.

 

Also go into Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disc Cleanup and see what that tells you.

 

thanks for the tip - did download the diskreport, and it finished its scan. it says i have 15.9 gb of zip files, and 5.5 'other' gb's. my jpg and mp3 files account for about 1gb each. I do not know the source of all these zip files, i download very little from the internet, and did not add anything as far as hardware goes except for the printer i mentioned. Spyware dr is still running btw, its taken over 3 hrs now. If i do not need these zip files, i imagine this would solve the problem, but i do not know how to identify thier whereabouts, or how to delete them.

 

it wont even let me clean it up, it says i dont have enough room to compress the files.

 

Your spyware scan may be hung...if you truly don't know where the .zip files came from, its your call (because it sounds mysterious...15GB?!?), but I might stop the scan, delete them like any other file (right click, delete...buh-bye) and do your disk cleanup and defrag again, then try your spyware scan again.

15 GB of unknown files is definitely a sign of badness of some sort IMHO

Good luck.

 

Would you mine posting some sample filenames of those .zip files if possible?

 

well, the spyware scan finally stopped, and told me i have 388 infected objects. I couldnt clean it with the spyware doctor until i buy the full version. As far as the other program, it gives a pie chart, and it says that the zip files are taking up 15 gb, but they do not give an exact location for those zip files, except that they are in 'documents and settings'. I tried to find which folder they are in or where they are located, but i couldnt find the source of all those files. I would delete them, if i knew exactly where they were. I did do a search for .zip files by right clicking on the start button, then putting '.zip' in the search box, searching the entire c drive and i got a bunch of zip files, but i dont know if i need them on the PC or not, i couldnt tell by the description or folder location, so i was reluctant to delete any of them just yet.

 

I think you probably have two sets of issues...the first involve the registry errors...try this: http://www.tune-up.com .....there is a free 30 day trial in there that will actually fix the entire registry and a whole lot more...I recommend it often

the second involves those mysterious zippers...hmmmm...this would be easier if I knew what the heck they were...

for now, if you run the whole Tune-up scan, you may be surprised just what it fixes (it is recommended here at majorgeeks too)

 

Another thought...go to your zip files and check in properties (right click, "properties") and check their last modify date/time...just wondering if all 15.9GB showed up together, which would be an interesting event...especially if you don't remember inviting them.

 

thanks for the tip- i downloaded the tune up, and it cleared up over 6000 files. Most of them being in the internet explorer folder. Unfortunately, it only cleared up a minimum of space. When i do the 'properties' on the hard drive, the pie chart is totally blue (used space), even after cleaning those files.

 

Try this program to remove the spyware: http://www.safer-networking.org/

As for the .zip files, I recommend you do a search for all .zip files on your PC and remove any that are in "documents and settings" that you do not recognize.