Hidden Files Eating Up Hard Drive Space???

[Goofy4TheWorld]

I am looking for some really expert ideas.

My wife's laptop is 14 months old with a 300GB HDD. The last time I looked at it in "My Computer", it had 100 of 300 GB used (we have lots of pictures). Last night I looked and it had 295 of 300 GB used. Just last week she got a virus warning when trying to delete an email on her work's email server (accessed using Outlook Web Access.) Her work's servers are eat up with viruses, but it appeared that Norton was blocking any problems.

During the two months since I last saw her hard drive usage, my wife has gotten into riping her CDs and putting them on her generic ipod device. All the rips are MP3s and the whole music folder is only like 3GB. Pictures are only 10GB. When I open the C: drive, click it where I can see both hidden and system OS files, then right click and click properties for all files and folders, it says she is only using 54 GB, but if you open My Computer and look at the C: drive, it is red and says 3GB of 300 free.

So last night I deleted some old stuff off her laptop and increased the free space from 5 to 20GB. Then she ripped two CDs and when I came home this afternoon it was back down to 3GB free!

I suspect either 1) a really nasty virus is not being detected by full scans ran using Norton, or 2) that something in Windows Media Player is copying all of the music/video files on my desktop computrer onto her HDD but in some kind of super-hidden folder, or 3) the HDD is failing and I am up the creek.

Any super smart computer wizzes have any clues?

[Goofy4TheWorld]

SOLVED!!! I guess I turned out to be the super smart computer wizz? ;) :ill:

LONG story short, something unknown changed the amount of disk space that Vista was using for "System Restore" points. I found an article on Dell's website that talked about my exact symptoms, and walked me through running a command line "vssadmin list shadowstorage" which showed me that Vista was using 226GB for shadow copy, and listed maximum shadow storage space at "UNBOUNDED".

Windows had 34 restore points going back 28 days before I changed the max to 45GB, or 15% of the drive. After that, it dropped to only 4 restore points.

I still think a virus made this change, but what a RELIEF!!!

Thanks for reading!

NOT FORE HIRE

PS: Just realized that each restore point was using an average of 11GB, which sounds high...?

[badkitty]

Congratulations! I am glad you were able to figure out the problem. I also have Vista so this is great info to have!

[DizneyRox]

I use a product called TuneUp Utilities to help keep things running smooth. It manages the System Restore points to a decent level (deleting old ones, etc) it can clean your registry, compact the registry, defrag, etc. All the good stuff everyone (on Windows at least) should be doing almost weekly.

Highly recommended to use it along with a decent (not Norton, that's not decent) anti-virus and at least two different malware detection/removal programs.

I recommend AVG anti-virus and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and MalwareByte's Anti-Malware... I no longer recommend Avast for virus scanning.

[eas423]

Is TuneUp freeware? And will it work on XP?

[DizneyRox]

TuneUp is NOT freeware. I don't think there are any freeware utilities that will do what this does all in one package.

Yes, it works on XP, all my machines are XP except my home theater PC, that's Win7.

[Goofy4TheWorld]

I recommend AVG anti-virus and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware and MalwareByte's Anti-Malware... I no longer recommend Avast for virus scanning.

I had been using AVG Free for YEARS on three computers, and in the last 2 weeks, 2 of them became overwhelmed with viruses, to the point that since they were 5.5 and 7 years old, I retired them to the graveyard of computers in my closet. I am done with AVG.

I choose Norton just because that is what came on the Dell for my house when I bought it. We will see how I like it. I realized after I bought Norton for a year the my ISP would give me 10 copies of a customized version of McAfee called McAfee Elite for free, but I had already bought Norton. :( I did Install McAfee on one of the new computers, so I am trying out both.

I think Norton and McAfee have malware blockers, but to be honest I am not positive on that. I am going to look into more advanced computer security after the last two weeks that I have gone through!!!