Free Disk Space

[Guest]

My Dell Computer came to me new with Windows XP Home
installed. I don't know when the problem described below
started. While my computer is on, Drive C free disk space
decreases for no apparant reason. It takes about 6 hours
for it to reach zero. I can't find any files or folders
whose size has increased, yet the total used increases.
Eventually programs won't run because disk space is so
low. I have more than one gigabit free when I first start
the computer. I can't find any info concerning this
problem or it solution. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

 

[Paul B T Hodges]

My initial guess would be you have a virus which is constantly requesting
memory, because of this, windows xp is constantly increasing the size of the
pagefile.sys file which by default is in the root directory of the partition
containing xp.

Watch it and see if it grows.

Make sure all hidden files and system files are visible.

My Computer/tools/folder options/View

Select "Show hidden files and folders"

and Unselect

Hide Protected System files (Recommended)

Then go into the root directory and see how big pagefile.sys is, and if its
growing.

You can also search the system for files modified today and greater than
10MB as follows:

start/search

Select All files and folders

Under When was it modified
Select specify dates and leave the default of todays date

Under What size it
Select specify size, and "at least" set 10000, thats around 10MB

Under more advanced options
Make sure search system folders, Search hidden files and folders and search
subfolders are all selected, the should be by default.

The click search and see what it comes back with.

Paul