Vanishing hard disk space

  • Thread starter Thread starter JoeSpareBedroom
  • Start date Start date
Bri

I seem to recall that one problem in the past with Zone Alarm was that
it caused problems with System Restore. Multiple restore points ate up
free disk space. However, that problem I imagine is now fixed and there
is no sign of the problem on 'JoeSpareBedroom's' machine. I use the
Windows Firewall behind a router. I see little point in a third party
firewall. Waste of money on a home computer.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
I can see no problems indicated in the HD Tune report. I have comments
to make below on the Disk Defragmenter report.

I wonder whether there is any correlation between moving files to your
external drive and adding new downloads? There is a 671 mb file in your
Recycle Bin. Retaining files in the Recycle bin is wasteful if you have
limited free disk space. I also see you are not emptying your Outlook
Express Deleted items folder. Compacting Outlook Express folders
regularly would help on your machine.

In Outlook Express place the cursor on Local Folders and select File,
Work Offline followed by File, Folder, Compact All. Do not attempt to
interrupt or stop the process until it has completed. Close Outlook
Express when it has completed. As an aside your Outlook Express folders
are too large and you will encounter folder corruption and loss of
messages if you do not take measure to resolve that situation.

Your pagefile is in multiple fragments and as a result when you write
new files to disk they inevitably be fragmented. The advice to let
Windows manage the pagefile is responsible for this state of affairs.
With only 20% free disk you may be to achieve a new pagefile with fewer
fragments but it is not practical to achieve a contiguous pagefile
unless you have 50% to 60% free disk space. Although letting Windows
manage the pagefile is commonly recommended there are some of us who
think this is not the best advice.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Hi Gerry - thanks for the info, though my machine (XP Pro) was not creating
multiple restore points and of course after a reboot the freespace on the
hard drive reverted to what it should have been. It would then gradually
diminish until another reboot. As I had just upgraded to the latest version
of ZA (free version), I suspected that this may be the cause, therefore I
disabled it in msconfig startup, rebooted and no more diminishing memory.
Subsequently I uninstalled ZA and installed Comodo (free AV and firewall
combined). Since then, no more problems and machine boots faster too!

It may not be the same with JoeSpareBedroom's PC but if he were to first of
all disable ZA startup, reboot, then see if there is still a problem, it
would indicate whether or not ZA is implicated.

Cheers,
Bri.
 
Bri wrote:
It may not be the same with JoeSpareBedroom's PC but if he were to
first of all disable ZA startup, reboot, then see if there is
still a problem, it would indicate whether or not ZA is implicated.
Click to expand...

Many past-cases of ZoneAlarm issues required complete removal of the
ZoneAlarm software to resolve prior to ZoneAlarm putting out fixes for them.

I'd say uninstalling is just slightly more trouble than
disabling/rebooting - and then only if you decide to re-install. ;-)
 
Bri said:
I thought the name of the guy with the problem was 'JoeSpareBedroom'.
Anyway, hopefully he'll see the post and try, first of all, disabling ZA
from the startup in msconfig to see if that works, then if so, replace ZA
with something else. (I'm now using Comodo).
Click to expand...

Yes, that's me with the vanishing disk space problem, which is entirely
different from a "vanishing memory problem" described by someone named
Twayne in a discussion I have no involvement with.
 
Shenan Stanley said:
Bri wrote:


Many past-cases of ZoneAlarm issues required complete removal of the
ZoneAlarm software to resolve prior to ZoneAlarm putting out fixes for
them.

I'd say uninstalling is just slightly more trouble than
disabling/rebooting - and then only if you decide to re-install. ;-)
Click to expand...


In the past, some ZA "complete uninstalls" have required dicking around in
the registry, which at least in my opinion indicates sloppy programming. Or,
maybe a lot more uninstalled programs leave remnants in the registry, and
ZoneAlarm's creator is just being honest.

In any case, ZA is gone.
 
Shenan Stanley said:
<snipped>
<entire conversation archived indefinitely>
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...p.general/browse_frm/thread/1c9e81bd744ca194/
</entire conversation archived indefinitely>




Not sure what conversation you are reading - but the original post you
quoted by responding told you all of that. ;-)

What I gathered from the original posting:

- 18GB of total drive space; OP is supposedly very careful about free
space given how little total is available.
- OP received a message that the drive was running out of space, checked
and it was down to under 200MB free.
- OP walked away - came back - 4GB now free; supposedly nothing done to
make that happen other than maybe closing Outlook Express and Firefox and
allowing time to pass.
- Full scans by the OP with AVAST and SPYBOT SEARCH & DESTROY found
nothing.
- OP uses ZoneAlarm.

At this time - given what was and has been - OP has an 18GB hard disk
drive/partition with 4GB free space. OP is curious as to what happened to
lower the free space to 200MB or less and then give that back with little
to no interaction from them.

My suggestions are still pretty much the same.

- Uninstall ZoneAlarm. It is a placebo for most users - while it is a
fact the Windows XP Firewall does not do anything with outgoing stuff - if
you have something it needs to block outgoing - you are already
infested/infected. Use the Windows XP Firewall, stay behind a NAT router
and use common sense.
- Uninstall Avast! AV. While it is still one of my suggested freebie
AVs - I think Avira is better (for free) and eSet NOD32 AV only (cost) is
better as well.
- Uninstall Spybot Search and Destroy and use MalwareBytes. The choice of
whether to install resident or just use the free scanning capabilities
every so often is one the OP should make (as is all of this - as these are
just suggestions.)
- Cleanup the hard drive space given the instuctions from earlier.

Going through all of the suggestions so far - no one _really_ disagrees
with this. Some loosely defend ZoneAlarm and another even says that could
be the cause of the problem. I didn't see anyone say anything about
Avast!/Avira or SpyBot Search & Destroy really (other than me) and other
people mentioned parts of what my steps would check/clear up - pointing to
certain things as the possible culprit (like System Restore points.)

Essentially JoeSpareBedroom has done parts of the suggestions and said
would get to the rest after holiday guests leave and they have more time.
Click to expand...


UPDATE:

(in no particular order relative to who suggested these things or when they
were suggested)

- Your reading of the problem was correct. And the low disk space warning,
which Jose described as "some warning appeared" was a small popup at the
right end of the task bar. I interpreted his use of quotation marks to mean
he'd never seen such a warning and was wondering about its origin.

- ZoneAlarm has been uninstalled and Windows firewall activated. Nice speed
improvement.

- There have been no subsequent reappearances of the disk space problem,
which has stabilized just under 4 GB.

- I have no opened the case yet to better understand the RAM discrepancy,
but I've decided it's a side issue because I specifically recall telling the
computer shop that I needed to keep the budget low (a mistake).

- There were NO multiple restore points to begin with.

- Defrag has been run.

- Pagefile.sys was disabled, deleted and then enabled again.

If I've not responded to anyone else's tips, please ask.
 
Gerry said:
I can see no problems indicated in the HD Tune report. I have comments to
make below on the Disk Defragmenter report.

I wonder whether there is any correlation between moving files to your
external drive and adding new downloads? There is a 671 mb file in your
Recycle Bin. Retaining files in the Recycle bin is wasteful if you have
limited free disk space. I also see you are not emptying your Outlook
Express Deleted items folder. Compacting Outlook Express folders regularly
would help on your machine.
Click to expand...

That's done roughly every two weeks. It's unusual for me to let the Inbox
grow larger than about 100 messages, a number recommended in the past by
MVPs in this and other MS newsgroups. The large files in the recycle bin
were the backups from the last folder compacting event. My usual procedure
is:

- Distribute Inbox msgs to relevant folders (not subfolders of Inbox) if
necessary.
- Empty "deleted" folder (usually done daily - the snapshot you saw didn't
reflect this)
- Shut down OE.
- Backup OE messages to external HD.
- Restart OE.
- Go to "work offline"
- Compact OE folders.
- Leave backups in Recycle Bin for a few hours until I'm sure everything's
working OK, even though I also have them backed up on the external HD.

Your pagefile is in multiple fragments and as a result when you write new
files to disk they inevitably be fragmented. The advice to let Windows
manage the pagefile is responsible for this state of affairs.
Click to expand...

I went through the procedure (recommended in this thread) of disabling the
page file, deleting, rebooting, but don't recall if the defrag results you
saw were before or after. I'll check again.

With only 20% free disk you may be to achieve a new pagefile with fewer
fragments but it is not practical to achieve a contiguous pagefile unless
you have 50% to 60% free disk space. Although letting Windows manage the
pagefile is commonly recommended there are some of us who think this is
not the best advice.
Click to expand...

I'll have to rejigger that setting once the larger hard disk is in place.

Hope this helps.

Gerry
Click to expand...


Yes. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this little circus of mine.
 
I had the same thing happen on Dec 23, 2009. I use 10 G of a 40 g hardrive.
Girlfriend said there was low disk space. I had 0 space free. Freed up
space by deleting unused programs to get 300 MB free. Then shut down.
Restarted windows and I got my space back.

I am pretty sure it is a zone alarm issue. I have no fix but wanted you to
know you ain't crazy.
 
Jon said:
I had the same thing happen on Dec 23, 2009. I use 10 G of a 40 g
hardrive.
Girlfriend said there was low disk space. I had 0 space free. Freed up
space by deleting unused programs to get 300 MB free. Then shut down.
Restarted windows and I got my space back.

I am pretty sure it is a zone alarm issue. I have no fix but wanted you
to
know you ain't crazy.
Click to expand...


I didn't want to believe the problem could be ZA, but lo and behold, ZA is
gone and so is the problem. Another issue is gone, too: If I walked away
from Firefox with 2-3 tabs open, some with flash content, and came back an
hour later, it seemed FF cached itself on an old Casio watch connected to my
computer with two paper cups and some string. It would take forever for the
damned program to come back to life, and it's not HEAVY flash content I'm
talking about - sometimes just a relatively lightweight banner on a couple
of the sites.

With ZA gone, that problem's gone, too. This machine snaps again.
 
JoeSpareBedroom said:
I didn't want to believe the problem could be ZA, but lo and
behold, ZA is gone and so is the problem. Another issue is gone,
too: If I walked away from Firefox with 2-3 tabs open, some with
flash content, and came back an hour later, it seemed FF cached
itself on an old Casio watch connected to my computer with two
paper cups and some string. It would take forever for the damned
program to come back to life, and it's not HEAVY flash content I'm
talking about - sometimes just a relatively lightweight banner on a
couple of the sites.
With ZA gone, that problem's gone, too. This machine snaps again.
Click to expand...

Placebo - but with side effects. ;-)
 
Hey Twayne read this.
JoeSpareBedroom said:
I didn't want to believe the problem could be ZA, but lo and behold, ZA is
gone and so is the problem. Another issue is gone, too: If I walked away
from Firefox with 2-3 tabs open, some with flash content, and came back an
hour later, it seemed FF cached itself on an old Casio watch connected to
my computer with two paper cups and some string. It would take forever for
the damned program to come back to life, and it's not HEAVY flash content
I'm talking about - sometimes just a relatively lightweight banner on a
couple of the sites.

With ZA gone, that problem's gone, too. This machine snaps again.
Click to expand...
 
Ok already! :)
Click to expand...

Heh :-)

If you recall, I was the one who chidingly said ZA was a placebo after
you had stated:
All true, I suppose. But no computer of mine has been infected with
anything nasty in almost 8 years, and although I know ZA isn't
primarily responsible for this, I pretend that it is. :-)
Click to expand...

And like Shenan added, in addition to being placebo, it also aaparently
has some (rather unwanted) side effects! I'm glad your problem is now
solved. Thanks for reporting.
 
Daave said:
Heh :-)

If you recall, I was the one who chidingly said ZA was a placebo after you
had stated:


And like Shenan added, in addition to being placebo, it also aaparently
has some (rather unwanted) side effects! I'm glad your problem is now
solved. Thanks for reporting.
Click to expand...

So what you're saying is that it's a placebo.
 
JoeSpareBedroom said:
So what you're saying is that it's a placebo.
Click to expand...

Read it again, Joe. :-)

I *had* said (a few days ago) that since you had used ZA for 8 years and
you felt good that none of your computers ever were infected, "There's
your placebo." That is, you could have run Windows Firewall all that
time with the same results. I was explaining that outbound protection is
more of a placebo than anything else since a nasty would be able to
bypass that anyway.

What is happening *now* is apparently *not* a placebo effect. Apparently
this ZA "drug" has some unwanted side effects (affecting performance and
how much free hard drive space you have)! This was Shenan's point, and I
was agreeing with it.

Does it make sense now? :-)
 
Daave said:
Read it again, Joe. :-)

I *had* said (a few days ago) that since you had used ZA for 8 years and
you felt good that none of your computers ever were infected, "There's
your placebo." That is, you could have run Windows Firewall all that time
with the same results. I was explaining that outbound protection is more
of a placebo than anything else since a nasty would be able to bypass that
anyway.

What is happening *now* is apparently *not* a placebo effect. Apparently
this ZA "drug" has some unwanted side effects (affecting performance and
how much free hard drive space you have)! This was Shenan's point, and I
was agreeing with it.

Does it make sense now? :-)
Click to expand...


It made sense two days ago. I was just razzing you because I can. :)
 
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