Free space on C drive is shrinking

[vaca232]

I'm stumped with this one. I have 1.33GB free on my C drive, where Windows is installed. When I turn the computer on the 1.33GB shrinks at about 1MB/s. It keeps shrinking until Windows gives me free space warnings. When I restart the computer the free space is reset to 1.33GB. There's nothing in any temp folder on the C drive.

Does anyone know where my free space is going?

 

[Fardringle]

Windows is probably set to use a dynamic (variable) sized page file and as you open more programs, Windows needs more memory so it allocates more disk space to the page file.

 

[vaca232]

I have Windows set to use a 1GB fixed size page file, so it's not that. Good thought though. System restore is also disabled and I can't find any viruses...

I also get an svchost error on startup

 

[RPDP]

download "Process Explorer" from www.sysinternals.com. Run it and be sure to select the "Virtual size", "working set size" in display details. [ R-click on the column title -> "Select columns" -> select "Process Memory" tab -> check the above two columns].

Now see which process is swallowing up the memory....

 

[Navid]

Open "Task manager" (Ctrl Alt Del).
Select the "Processes" tab.
Click on "View" and "Select Columns".
Select "I/O Write Bytes".

Now, you can see which process is doing all the writing to the disk. The name of the process may give you a hint.

 

[vaca232]

Good thought.

The process "System" is doing all the I/O Write Bytes. It's total matches how much space I've lost since restarting. It's doing ~7.5MB/minute of writes. It's CPU usage stays at 00 or 02. It's using 240K of RAM and 28K of virtual memory. It's not reading anything, jut writing.

Any thoughts on that??

 

[corkyg]

Running any system with less than 10% of a HDD's space free is not recommended. THE OS uses lots of TMP and TEMP files - there are also log files that are always added to. If you have 1 GB free, that tells me you only have a 10GB HDD. Get a bigger drive.

 

[vaca232]

The hard drive is 60GB total. Windows is on a partition. I've checked all of my temp folders and they are all more or less empty. My desktop and documents are on a different partition. Temporary internet files for both IE and Firefox total maybe 50MB combined. My pagefile is set to stay at 1GB. System restore is disabled. Indexing is disabled.

The only file on the C drive over 200MB is the pagefile. Everytime I restart the free space resets to 1.33GB and the System process slowly eats it all up.

It's not a matter of log files or temp files.

 

[Navid]

After you boot up, right click on a folder that you suspect contains the file that grows and click on property. Note the size of the folder. Then, after a few seconds do it again. So, keep monitoring the size of the folder. Try this on different folders until you find the growing folder.

Use msconfig and disable all the startup programs. You may find a program that runs in the background responsible for the problem.

 

[vaca232]

I've tried...the thing is, according to Windows, no file or folder is getting bigger. The only file on my C drive over even 200MB is the pagefile. In Task Manager, "System" now shows 1,187,747,368 I/O Write Bytes. Where all that is, I have no idea.

If I select all the files and folders on the C drive and hit properties it says 6.90GB. If I go to the C drive properties, it says 8.07GB used. The difference between those numbers is 1.17GB, the same as System's I/O Write Bytes...

 

[Navid]

Have you set the folder properties so that you can view all the files including protected operating system files?
http://www.xtra.co.nz/help/0,,4155-1916458,00.html

 

[Billzie7718]

System could be downloading automatic updates?

 

[vaca232]

Originally posted by: Navid
Have you set the folder properties so that you can view all the files including protected operating system files?
http://www.xtra.co.nz/help/0,,4155-1916458,00.html

Yep

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: vaca232

Originally posted by: Navid
Have you set the folder properties so that you can view all the files including protected operating system files?
http://www.xtra.co.nz/help/0,,4155-1916458,00.html

Yep

This, and what you are saying about the discrepancy between the used drive size and the total size of the files and folders on the drive, makes no sense unless you do not have permission on some files on the drive!