Yeah, it does sound like you've got a bad virus infection. Not many
other reasons your hard drive space would keep disappearing. You'll
probably end up reformatting - or using the manufacturer's rescue
disks. But here's some things I would try:
1. Boot into Safe Mode and see if the hard drive light still lights up
all the time. If not, then you can be pretty sure that it's a software
problem and probably a virus. (To get to safe mode keep tapping F8
during boot).
2. XP's System Restore is a huge hog of disk space. You could try
turning it off. Or at least delete some restore points if you've got a
lot. Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System
Restore. You can set the amount of disk space reserved for restore
points - the less space you allocate, the fewer points will be saved.
If you turn it off "all" restore points are immediately deleted - and no
more will be created.
3. Check in the Scheduled Tasks folder to see if you've got something in
there that is repeatedly running and writing to the disk. Start,
Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks.
4. You might try turning off Automatic Updates to see if maybe it's
malfunctioning and repeatedly downloading updates. Start, right-click
My Computer, Properties, AutoUpdates tab.
Good luck,
Donk
winegumsinsnow wrote:
> I am losing my mind and maybe my computer here!
>
> microsoft xp home, sp3, hp computer intel pentium 4
>
> My computer has always been somewhat slow and sluggish but recently it
> got worse. The light seems to almost always be on even when I am not
> using the computer.
>
> Then I noticed that I recently had 27% free space and now I have 1% on
> my c drive. I have not added anything much beyond emails and have been
> relentlessly deleting and uninstalling to try and save my space.
>
> I have done disk clean-up, defrag, and check disk. I removed extra
> restore points and lowered the space of restore. I have also used pc
> doctor and my hardware passed the tests.
>
> My virus checker cannot properly run with this low free space so I
> cannot do a proper scan. The online scan will also not load onto my
> computer so that is not an option? I use shaw secure (made by f-secure)
>
> I have googled the problem and find similiar questions but most of the
> answers fall into the category of cleaning up my free space. I do not
> believe that I used up 26% of my free space in less than 2 weeks
> without adding anything much. Also with all the deleting and
> uninstalling that should even out things somewhat. I don't believe the
> amount of free space is accurate.
>
> I don't know if this is relevant or not but I noticed my add remove
> programs seems off. My sp3 says last time I used it is 2 years before
> I installed it. Most of my dates are off. Also frequency of use is
> off.
>
>
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