MYSTERIOUS FILE(>1G) IN C:\WINDOWS

[cooler]

How much memory do you have on your computer? I am going to take a
guess at 1 GB. You may be looking at your hibernation file though I
haven't seen it show up like that. It is also possible that it i
your
pagefile, though I haven't seen it show up like that either. Thes
are
both usually found in your C:\ directory. If you have done spywar
and
antivirus checks and the computer is running fine, I wouldn't worry
about it.

----
Nathan McNulty


cooler wrote:-
I just found out that the size of this file (named 652.) is exactly
1giga bytes (1,048,576 kB). This seems like that there is one routine
having set the upper limit of its file size which is 1G.

It is shown in win explorer that it is a hidden system file. If I try
deleting the file, it says 'Cannot delete 652: It is being used by
another person or program. Close any program that might be usingthe
file and try again.'

by using process explorer and finding the handle, found out that the
'System' process is using the file c:\windows\652. I could close the
handle to this file.

Sometimes XP can keep working without any problem. But this 1g file
disappeared and the space it occupied were released. When I next time
reboot the computer, this file appears again.

Sometimes the computer would immediately reboot as soon as I clos
the
handle to this file by using process explorer. After rebooting, this
file is still sitting in c:\windows and still having the size of 1G!

Help!

-

Hey Nathan,
Problem solved.

IT IS the paging file though I still un-discovered why it had a such
weird name but not normal pagefile.sys. Before I made any change, in m
XP control panel, I also found all the paging files for my 3 partition
were disabled. After I enabled paging file for my C: partition an
using 'system managed size' and rebooted, pagefile.sys appeared in it
normal location: c:\ and this time I could delete c:\windows\652 !

I thought this weird paging file was set up by my previuosly use
optimizing freewares! I tried several of them before.

Thanks very much for ur kind help.

All the best

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Glad to hear what it was. Some systems are able to work without a
paging file, but if you don't have enough memory to do this, it seems
Windows automatically makes one anyways