Loosing hard drive space

[dfwcomputer]

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction.For some reason i keep loosing HD space until the point of 100kb left.But if you restart the system i get back to the full 13.8gb. Because i very rarly turn off my computer after a couple of days i am getting the dreaded error LOW DISK SPACE.
i have done advanced checks including:

• Turned off system restore
• full virus scans from 2 different virus programs pc-cillin internet security and norton
• searched for spyware adware and malware
• checked admin tools for log files running searched for log files
• Uninstalled all programs i have added in the last 3 months.
• search for files modified in but can't seem to find it.
• Temp internet files are restricted to 20MB
• Page file on C: & D: Both set to custom with a minimum of 800MB and a maximum of 800MB
  

Windows = 3.06 GB
Documents & Settings = 2.07 GB
Programs = 4.6 GB

obviously you have boot.ini and assorted so the total of every thing inside c: (e.g selected everything inside c: with all hidden files shown) = 10.6GB

i have 80GB drive, partitions are:
C: = 24.41GB
D: = 24.41GB
E: = 25.71GB

going by this i should have 13.8GB but only have 12.6GB (because i just restarted but this will keep going down till i have to restart.)

My system is a 2.8ghz intel with windows xp pro with sp2. I am also running apache web server but check to make sure no page parse logs where being created and all looks good.I also keep getting a pop up dial-up connection which is comming from explorer.exe but after numerous attempts with spybot and the likes i can not find anything.

i am know at a total loss, maybe it's as simple as a log file or maybe it's a virus, maybe a fresh look from somebody else can point me in the right direction.

Where might the other be? How do I prevent my hard drive from mysteriously filling up?

Thanks,
Dean Welch

[danielgk]

well im not much of an expert, but you can try backing up your files and formatting your hard drive.
Or transfering important files to one partition and format the other parititions and install windows again.
If it is somehting to do with log files or anything like that formatting will always fix that, and since you have multiple paritions you can transfer documents that you need and format and reinstall windows on the other partitions.
Do know what to do other than that
good luck

[dfwcomputer]

thanks for the response,

and yes i was going to do this but, i woulod still like to know what is doin g it so that people here can benefit from it.Also i don't want keep formating if it happens again.but depending on what i find out that could be my only option.

any other ideas?

Thanks,
Dean Welch

[vishy5592]

xp service pack 2 kind of did weird things 2 my computer
if u started loosing hard drive space after sp2 then uninstalling it and keep it on service pack1 that's what i've had to do
tell me if this works cos it will help me

[MacG]

Have you run chkdsk /f recently?

[dfwcomputer]

thanks for all your responses guys,

xp service pack 2 kind of did weird things 2 my computer
if u started loosing hard drive space after sp2 then uninstalling it and keep it on service pack1 that's what i've had to do
tell me if this works cos it will help me

i have had SP2 in for nearly 12 months without a hitch.so i don't think this would be the problem.

Have you run chkdsk /f recently?

yes this was one of the first things i tried as i thought it might be a simple file size reporting problem....Unfortunately it wasn't.

i also had a friend look at it who is also a techy and he can't seem to work it out either.does not matter what you do you can not find where the space is going.
originally i had 13.9 GB of free space after a restart today it is down to 5.12GB and all i have done was restart the computer last night before i went to bed and checked it this morning.

Totally stumped.......Can anyone help.??????

Thanks again for all your responses.
Dean Welch

[dark_naruto]

hi..
errrr.. you could try to check the startup files using MSCONFIG..
try uncheckin some of the applications there then reboot.. i also suggest unchecking them 1 by 1 to isolate what causes this problem.

[MacG]

The explorer.exe looks suspicious. It should be on C:\Windows\explorer.exe

Have you tried changing it or running: sfc /scannow?

[nova_ace47]

dfw,

This one is a real pain in the butt to figure out what is goin on. I recomend you check X:\windows\system32\logfiles\wmi\trace.log. If this file exists on your computer and seems rather bloated, what happened is someone ran Microsoft bootvis and a trace then forgot to shut it off. I've had this problem for six months and just fixed it!!!

Open bootvis (if it is not currently installed get it here www.majorgeeks.com ) go to Trace -----> Stop Tracing. you can then delete the trace.log file and reboot.

Let me know how it goes!
Jake

[seacat88]

I bought an external HDD for storage purpose, but ho, after i format, it still got some space missing one. Its about 90 MB
Its a small amount but i scare it is caused by some bad sector so i wonder how can i resolve it? Or actually its normal?

The capacity is 750GB for this Maxtor external HDD.

[davedarkstar]

err,just a point,its really not good to have more than one virus scanner on youre pc.
(full virus scans from 2 different virus programs pc-cillin internet security and norton)