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 >> The NOSPIN Group Promotions is now offering our special coffee cups and mouse pads with the PCSOFT logo... at a great price!!! http://freepctech.com/goodies/promotions.shtml