Disapearing space!

Hey guys, not really a software question but I figured you guys would probably know best.
My boot drive seems to be mysteriously losing space at a steady rate. I have no spyware or viruses, and have a fairly fresh copy of Vista Ultimate installed.
I keep all my media files and download folder on a separate disk drive, so it's not downloads that's causing the problem.
I am talking about losing probably around 1gb of space a day, and disk cleanup comes back with maybe 100mb of temp files, so it's not that either.
Also when I select everything in my boot drive, it shows about 13gb short of what the disk properties say.
So where/what are these hidden files that are taking up so much space?? and randomly multiplying at the rate of young rabbits....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ssingspace.jpg

Open Internet Explorer and cleanup your temp directories.

Oh yea. And get a better firewall so I won't keep storing my xvid gay pron on your system.

:D

My you are brilliant, I clearly said that I ran diskcleanup with no real change, and that it was a pretty recent OS install.
Anybody with a logical answer?

and PS: IE is for suckers

Have you tried a simple program like Ccleaner or Tuneup 2007 to delete the temp , cache , Zero bit files , cookies ........ I could go on all night . :lol: Thats what I would try ,use a good system cleaner see what you get . :)


If you try either one it has a Regleaner as well or the Tuneup has a Disk Doctor that may help you . Good luck .

Just a thought but disable or uncheck the index this drive for faster search option as it may speed up your computer a wee bit . Its the option under compress this drive to save space .

Thanks Peat Moss, havn't heard from you in a while.
I tried tuneup 2007 and it freed up all of 32mb :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kaiweiler

Thanks Peat Moss, havn't heard from you in a while.
I tried tuneup 2007 and it freed up all of 32mb :P

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Oh good was it a Registry problem or just the clean tool sorted it ? I luv these kind of posts tho, as its nice to help people help them selves . Soooo you need the Tuneup 2007 key . :whistling

Oh shit I just got it , so not all the space eh ? :lol: Have you tried a file tool like Tree to see whats taking up all the space ?

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

haha no, 32mb was not the result I was hoping for lol
I ran the registry cleaner, defrag, and optimizer in tuneup2007.
I'll check out that Tree program

Others computer troubles are much more interesting than my own , as I would of Formated ( again ) and done a fresh install , problem solved . Hey thats the easy way out tho .

I don't know what to add Kai , hope you get it sorted .

Hmm still not recognizing about 7gb of data...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/FileTree.jpg

goto the command prompt and type the following

Code:

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cacls c:\system~1 /e /g UserName:f

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replacing "UserName" with your account name (IE. Bill)

That will give you access to System Volume Information

I'm betting that's where the space is being taken up. If I'm right, you'll see some several GB files which are used for system restore and. My advice is to limit how much space is allocated to system restore.

access is denied :(
I only have the one user account and it is admin, why would I be denied?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kaiweiler

access is denied :(
I only have the one user account and it is admin, why would I be denied?

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vista doesn't really let you use the admin account, so your name must be something other than "Administrator".

take a look at my screen shot...
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/7463/caclsfm3.gif

if you still have trouble, type

Code:

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cacls "c:\system volume information" /e /g UserName:f

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with the quotes and replacing UserName with the name you see in the command prompt default path.

Also, you shouldn't be locked out of MSOCahe, but it won't give you back that much space. ~500MB for office 2007 and ~250 for office 2003

dam nice theme, but you could check for viruses as well just in case.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mrbombastic

dam nice theme, but you could check for viruses as well just in case.

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That's the default Windows Vista theme, for Ultimate anyway, not sure if the others are different...but yeah it is pretty slick
The computer is free from viruses and I do regular scans of both Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware.

I may install Partition Magic or something and see if that can recognize the space then hopefully create/format some partitions to get my space back...
we will see.

I once had a similar problem with XP and the space kept growing until the C: disk was full. I don't know if Vista has the same thing but the place where XP was growing was:

C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI

and the log file was tracefile.log

It had to do with bootvis crashing and getting locked in a continuous scan though so it probably doesn't have anything to do with Vista.