Not sure where this belongs...

[Dawnev]

hrmm... I've been havin trouble with my comp lately, and I was talkin to a friend and he referred me here... Even though he isn't here... I know bryce from somewhere else although he wouldn't recognize this sn... But I digress...

In the past week+ (I only noticed it this week, god knows how long it was goin on before that) I've noticed my computer's space being taken up. Actually, here's what happened...

I dled eMule (no one get on my case about that), and I was lookin through the statistics information, and saw 3.86 gb available on virtual drive, and said, "that's odd... wonder how it defines that." Then I looked at my c: properties, and low and behold, that's what it meant... the root drive had 3.86 gb left. As I try to maintain 8 gb (10% of our drive) free at all times, this was distressing, and I moved a few of my games over to our other drive to free up space... And it did. As much as 10 gb.

I thought I was safe, until a few days later when I noticed I was back under 8 gb. I knew that we hadn't downloaded that much in that time, not even a gb, even taking into account that emule allocates space for its downloads, so I tried something... I checked the c: drive properties, and it stated that "65 gb" were free. Then I went into the C: drive, (I have admin rights and displaying of hidden system files and folders on) and highlighted all folders, which totalled to about 52 gb. Missing space. Bad.

I dled avast!, ran it, found 5 gummy, 2 dummy virii, then dad yelled at me to uninstall it because it had affected his display settings, so I did. We have ZA, and norton, and neither of those alerted me to anything. I ran Ad-Aware, and Spybot S&D, and neither of those found anything. I checked my Remove/Change Programs, saw some of my games were still stored somewhere hidden on the drive, and uninstalled them, which freed up a few gb... which lasted a couple days. I recieved a recommendation to remove previous restore points, which I did, which freed up a couple more gb... Which are gone. I haven't been restarting my comp, so I don't think that it's something happening during bootup. So I don't know what it could be.

I attached a hijackthis log...

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Again, I know this is a lot, and I'm not sure where to go, which wound up with my being here, and I'll take any help I can get.

Much love, much peace, much with teh Ed, being out.

[Bryce W]

Your right about emule allocating space and I think this is the problem. I know you said that you have already taken this into account. But how much exactly did you take into account?

If you have downloaded 1mb of a 700mb movie file, that 1mb will take up the full 700mb. Something that is easy to do is have a bunch of small unfinished files which are a large file size when completed.

Eg, if you have 5 x 700mb movies which each have 1mb already downloaded your harddrive is allocating 3500mb.

Even though you uninstalled the program, check to see if the cached download files remained.


Edit: Where do you know me from anyway?

[Dawnev]

I took into account that the one music album I was downloading was less than 100 mb, and a few songs at 5 mb each. No movies.

And I know you from A4, no da. I started the writer's club, and quit about a month later. Although my account still exists, I believe...

[Bryce W]

I am not too sure about this one, other than the size allocation issues with eMule im not sure what it could be.

One last possibility is that the harddrive is just reporting wrong, do a checkdisk/scandisk and a good defrag (might want to leave it overnight) and see if that helps.

[Dawnev]

Well... I did a defrag with norton last night, and I ran scandisk yesterday, and the screen flashed by too fast for me to actually read anything @_@

The discrepancy is down to 8 gb, but size still seems to be disappearing... I know dad did a mass dl of stuff from audible.com cause of a sale they had, but still...

okay, active example.

9:30, before I start playing Ragnarok Online, I check Norton System Doctor, and it says that 11.5 gb are free.

11:30, I quit. I check Norton System Doctor again, and 10.5 gb are free.

*shrugs helplessly*

Also, do you remember me any better? Meh... I was one of the first 60~ ANetters to arrive. :P