I'm being careful to make controlled changes to help understand things... SR
size remains at 1976mb. I have done no manual SR actions. Each day I
routinely boot the PC in the morning and turn it off at night. There are now
3 RPnnn files:
RP444 1656mb 20061116 17:05
RP445 1599mb 20061117 19:40
RP446 1599mb 20061118 08:27 (my local time is Vov18 08:55, being in Australia)
So, it is still not honoring the SR size rule, and it is each day putting
the one huge file in SR.
Next I "rebuilt" the paging file...
1. Disabled hibernation - in case (v. large hyberfil.sys instantly gone).
2. Alter virt mem from custom managed 1536-3072 to none (pagefile.sys
remains).
3. Boot safe (oops, to regular user). Logoff. Logon to Administrator.
4. Alter virt mem to system managed (pagefile.sys instantly created ~1gb).
5. Reboot normal (pagefile.sys now ~1.5gb).
Now RP446 is 4166mb containing 3 large .sys files...
A0118244.sys ~1.5gb create 28Sep2005 21:00:20 mod 17Nov2006 07:36:12 (this
is the one present earlier)
A0118273.sys ~1.5gb create 28Sep2005 21:00:20 mod 18Nov2006 07:17:34
A0118279.sys ~1gb create 18Nov2006 10:04:50 mod 18Nov2006 10:04:50 So I
conclude it is capturing one pagefile.sys at every boot time, being the one
that exists (effectively at last shutdown, seeing that pagefile.sys mod only
seems to change on booting).
Bert in one of the web pages you referred me to (you) suggested checking the
pagefile.sys attributes (mine: 'system' 'hidden' throughout) & owner - well
mine does not give a security tab in properties (other objects do, I just
turned off simple file sharing for this investigation), but TreeSize Pro
reports owner as 'unknown' (was the same for hiberfil.sys).
Bert, I chuckled at your spelling accident...
The one common denominator is the presents of Norton applications.
If only Norton's presence more resembled presents!
I have not uninstalled any Norton stuff. I've experimented extensively with
Norton AntiVirus AutoProtect (due to a hint in one of the webpages you gave
me, Bert). It's now clear cut. [To be clear, I'm using NAV 2004 which is part
of Norton Internet Security 2004.] Whenever I boot with NAV's "Start
Auto-Protect when Windows starts up (recommended)" turned on, SR adds the
1.5gb pagefile.sys into a restore point. Whenever I boot with that setting
turned off, SR does not add the pagefile.sys to a restore point. So, my
workaround is to leave it off, and just (remember to) turn on Auto-Protect
straight after each boot.
Now for the other issue where SR goes over (and keeps growing) its disk
space limit. My theory is that SR never anticipated ever having any file to
handle in the order of 1.5GB, and that when calculating whether to purge any
old restore points it gets the answer wrong when such a large file is about
to be added. Supported by the following "evidence": SR manual restore point
creation does purge the big stuff, at least in the limited conditions I tried
it, being not much big stuff there altho well over the limit, and even here
the first manual create restore point only got rid of a small older restore
point leaving the huge over-the-limit one plus the brand new normal sized
one, but then imediately after another manual create restore point, it got
rid of the big one leaving just two normal sized ones.
Is there anything else I should do to gather more evidence / info? I can
uninstall (and properly purge - I've got some experience in this area) Norton
things if you think we'd learn anything.
--
K2
Bert Kinney said:
All along only the Windows partition (C
has been monitored by SR. The only
other visible partition is D:, a separate physical disk. It is a standard
Dell computer - there are 2 hidden partitions on the first disk.
Good.
Yesterday I used Disk Cleanup to remove all but the most recent restore
point - that worked as it should. I also cut the disk space for SR back to
1976 mb (the lowest it offers are 200mb ["0%"] and 1976mb ["1%"]).
The best choice is 1976 mb's.
I previously had 2 issues:
(1) At least one huge file inside most restore points - still a problem -
after booting today, folder RP444 is 1656.21 mb containing over 200 files,
but one, "A0118136.sys" is 1533.14 mb (1,607,610,368 bytes) by itself. See my
other posts for more info on this issue. However if I create a restore point
manually it is more normal size, around 65MB. Now, I have just searched my
disk for all Huge files, there is one that is this Exact Size: pagefile.sys.
Hmmm. Any ideas? Why would it include that file in the restore point? How
would I stop it from doing so?
A0118136.sys properties shows modified timestamp being that of Yesterday's
boot time - ie today's boot created a restore point containing yesterdays
pagefile.sys.
(2) SR was using "all" my 150GB disk ie not honoring the 12% limit - looks
to be cured since now there's only one restore point - today's new (big) one
- so it has removed the one remaining from yesterday, presume because todays
big one took it over the limit - but that means due to issue (1) I'll only
ever have one restore point unless I significantly increase the space
allocation (way over the suggested amount).
This is a very rarely reported issue and the solutions is not completely clear.
The one common denominator is the presents of Norton applications.
Reference:
http://snipurl.com/12da1 and
http://snipurl.com/12db3
I would suggest uninstalling all Norton applications fully (which is not exactly
straight forward) via add/remove programs. The following site will assist you
fully removing it.
Symantec Removal:
http://basconotw.mvps.org/SymRem.htm
When all the Norton junk is uninstalled continue monitoring the SVI folder.
Hopefully we will be able to come up with a solid solution.
--
Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member:
http://dts-l.org
Bert Kinney said:
Hi,
Set the amount of disk space used to hold restore points as Ron suggest. You
will also want to set System Restore to monitor the Windows partition ONLY.
Are
there other partitions being monitored by System Restore?
--
Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member:
http://dts-l.org
Thanks for the replies [Jerry, Larry, Ron]. I will try those things but
before I delete the evidence I was rather hoping to discover why it is not
working properly in the first place. Not much time left though coz my disk
will soon fill up with System Restore stuff.
--
K2
:
My PC = Windows XP pro SP2; Norton Antivirus 2004; plenty of software but
nothing special.
In my "_restore{..." folder there are 110 objects using up 129GB. Mostly
they are RP335 thru RP440 (26Aug06 thru 13Nov06), and a couple of other
tiny
files. I used the vbs scripts to check settings - they are system restore
life is 90 days and system restore point frequency is 24 hours. The disk
space usage is set to 12% (17966MB). Many (a bit over half) of the RPxxx
folders contain among other only small things just one large file, called
Annnnnnn.SYS (n's are digits), which is invariably 1533.1 MB. A few (13)
of
the RPxxx folders contain several (up to 5) such A*.sys files of that same
size.
For some reason restore points are not being deleted when they should. I
have no idea why, but would appreciate help. AFAIK there was nothing
special
on or around 26Aug06.
