Don, in addition to what Tom suggests, you can help your friend by
getting hold of a tool that shows where disk space is being used. I like
TreeSize - http://www.jam-software.com/ (the windows freeware version).
It will quickly show you which directories take the most space.
It won't show you what's changed recently. I don't know of any freely
available tool that will ... I wrote one myself but never released it.
Joe
Thomas Mayer wrote:
> Don
>
> Sure sounds like a virus to me. I would proceed as if there was a
> virus. Turn off System Restore. Start in safe mood. Clean up drive as
> much as possible. Run anti virus and anti spyware scans on BOTH C & E
> drives. Turn back on System Restore. Restart computer in normal mode.
> I'm sure you know the drill. Just that sometimes when up to your a--
> in alligators, it is hard to remember that your job was to drain the
> swamp.
>
> Tom
>
> Don Penlington wrote:
>> A friend called me over last nite.
>>
>> His computer is running XP SP2. He was getting a message that the
>> hard drive was nearly full.
>>
>> His HD is divided into 2 partitions, C and E. C is 12 Gb and E is
>> about 60 Gb.
>>
>> I checked the C properties and it showed only 45 Mb free space. The
>> computer was hardly running at all.
>>
>> I managed to delete about 1 Gb of stuff off C so that now there was
>> over 1Gb free space showing on C properties. Rebooted and performance
>> was back to normal.
>>
>> Ran Spybot spyware check after updating and all clean. I didn't run
>> an antivirus check as it would have taken too long.
>>
>> 1/2 hour later, up came the same message that the hard drive was
>> full. On checking C properties again, this time it showed no free
>> space at all---100% used. The computer almost came to a halt and had
>> difficulty closing and rebooting.
>>
>> E drive was OK, plenty of free space there.
>>
>> What could cause the C drive to fill of its own accord? Is there a
>> class of virus that does this? Or gives out spurious messages to this
>> effect?
>>
>> He's not very diligent about updating the a-v database, so I'm not
>> confident that an a-v check will pick up anything. It probably
>> wouldn't run anyway if the C-Drive is really full.
>>
>> I don't think it would be possible for anything that size (1 Gb) to
>> have been downloaded off the internet during that time, as he thinks
>> his bandwidth allocation is limited to dialup at the moment, though
>> he's not certain about that.
>>
>> Another thing which may be part of the same problem is that I cannot
>> open the Recycle Bin to empty it. When I check its properties, I get
>> a message that Recycle Bin is not accessible. What could cause that?
>>
>> I know there are some security suites such as Nortons that lock the
>> Recycle Bin, but he has nothing like that on the computer.
>>
>> Don Penlington
>>
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