Soback Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 I have a problem. I formated my HD a couple of days ago and now the space used on my HD just keeps growing. Like yesterday for example it was 900MB used, today it's 1.46GB used and I haven't installed anything. I started checking individual folders and some of the sizes do not match. For example when I right click on folder and choose properties, under size it gives me a report like this ex. 23.9mb (35,078,362) 108,068,864 bytes used. Shouldn't it be around 108mb used? I have a program "Easy Uninstall" and it gives me some weird reports too, like the size of a folder is 100 something mb, but when I open up a folder the files in it only ad up to about 9mb. What is going on with my computer. Can someone help?
demolition Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 I would say that its some kind of bug, go to Nortan Anti virus online, dunno the web and get the latest update, hopefully that solves it. If nortan doesn't solve it my suggestion is to take it down to your computer specialist and have him look it over
Guest Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 Either that or when you formatted your hard drive windows got confused as far as it's size is concerned. It may be showing things that are not actually true, because it thinks your hard drive is smaller then it is. If you just did it yesterday, I would do it again. Fdisk, and then reformat it. See what happens. Could be a virus, but it sure is a weird one. Either way, refoematting the hard drive would probably be your best bet, and reformat your boot sector as well, forget the command, but somebody else here I'm sure knows it. Good luck!!
Soback Posted October 11, 2001 Author Report Posted October 11, 2001 Now it's down to 1.07GB used space. I am going to run Scandisk, Defrag, Notron Antivirus and see if that helps. All suggestions about this are very much welcome. Thanks. Also I don't feel like taking it to a computer specialist. There's nothing on my pc to fix, all it has is win98SE, Microsoft office 2000, Norton Antivirus, Easy Uninstall, 1 game, getright and AOL. That's it. So when I checked it after finishing the whole install it was using about 900MB. Then it jumped to about 1 somthing GB (yesterday) today to 1.47 and now back to 1.07 so all that guy is going to tell me is to probably format again. Thanks for suggestion though. Oh yea, one more thing. I went into "Temporary Internet Files" and deleted all of them, after that I checked the size of it and it says that there are 9 folders in it +some files, I enabled "see all types of files" in folder options but still nothing is showing in "temporary internet files" folder, and it says it's using up 5 mb. Why is that, I mean the folder appears to be completly empty.
Soback Posted October 11, 2001 Author Report Posted October 11, 2001 Hey Jaguar, you mean exit to dos and type in format c: ? That's how I did it this weekend. Always do it this way.
demolition Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 I dont have a clue why its doing that, i suggested computer specialist as a last resort, b'c they like to steal you money for jobs that cost $20 at topsif its not reformating that needs to be done, he might know whatts wrong, but like i said LAST RESORT, cause they cost a pretty penny just to look at your PC
Akira Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 UHH... have you bothered to check your swap file (virtual mem) size. Unless you set it otherwise, it's dynamic and will grow and contract as the need arises. Even as much as the total of the free space on the HD.
Guest $iLk Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 It happened to me one time... reformat your drive now because it's going to screw up your hard drive and make space unreadable.
LordDavid Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 I had some hard drive problems awhile ago and I used Partition Magic to straighten them out.... Turns out that a FEW gigabytes of data was unassigned and therefore was not being detected by windows!
Guest Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 Formating c: is good but the boot sector of the disk, which is what makes the C drive bootable, does not get reformatted, there is a special boot sector format command that I do not remember, I better though, because I need to do it to my machine as well.Does anyone know that command? he needs to do it, this is where windows gets most of its info about size, space available, and directory structure, and I believe it is where his problem lies. OK, friend of mine remembered the command, it is fdisk /mbr This will tell the computer to Format the master boot record, then format the disk as usual and then load her up!! [ 10-11-2001: Message edited by: Jaguar ]
Soback Posted October 11, 2001 Author Report Posted October 11, 2001 I am starting to think that it might actually be the swap file. That's why the space grows and contracts, but there's still the question about the weird reports of the file sizes. But I guess it's better the be on the safe side and do one more reformat with that bootable sector wipe, so if someone knows the command that would be very helpfull. Got a question though, if I wipe the bootable sector too, how is computer going to read the hd?
Guest Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 You are not "wiping" the boot sector, you are reformatting it, just as you reformat the hard drive itself. It clears it of all data, and then when you reload it is fresh as well, no old info causing you problems!!And see my above edited post for the proper command!![ 10-11-2001: Message edited by: Jaguar ]
Emmett.hendrick Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 just a note fdisk /mbr does not format the boot record it rewrites it from a backup copy kept by the o/s thats why if you do a fdisk /mbr and reboot your pc it will boot into what ever O/S you have loaded. so it will not leave the boot record clean just put a fresh copy of the boot record in the boot partion.
Scrivener Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 Check your computer for files named Scam.exe, scam32.exe, or Sirc32.exe. This worm seems to be getting around a lot lately and I've already had two friends infected. The worm quadruples in size every day, sucking up disk space. If your virus programs are up-to-date, they should have cought the virus and at least isolated it. Thats when you can't run any more applications and end up with strange error messages, since it alters the Windows registry. It's pretty nasty, but dosn't do any real permanent or reversible damage.
Urza Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 Though, I've never personally had to deal with a virus, or know anyone who has, I do know that they mean buisness. I never open weird file attachments unless I'm pretty sure of what they are. As for your problem, I'd have to agree with everyone else, in that if you completely format your HD you might take the virus with it.
Guest $iLk Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 Search for prettypark32 in your temp internet files.you can get a prettypark cleaner from some sites...
Epsilon 5 Posted October 11, 2001 Report Posted October 11, 2001 Search for *.eml and *.nws files evrywhere on your disk. I had a that : Nimbda. In 5 mins it ate 250 megs putting 500k files everywhere with various names.
Soback Posted October 11, 2001 Author Report Posted October 11, 2001 Well, I searched for all of the files mentioned above, didn't find anything.Geez, that was a scare, the size seems to have stabilized at 1.10 gigs. I am going to wait a day or 2 and see if anything changes. Thanks for all your support, gave me some pretty good ideas and help.
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