• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Computer stealth installing stuff on my Hard drive?

V

vrfunk

n00b
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
10
The operating system I am using is W7 ultimate SP1. I have caught my computer repeatedly filling up disk space and I have no clue how.

Just yesterday I had about 21 gb of space left on my C drive and now its 16 gb. What on earth? I've seen it do this multiple times now. I installed no software, did not download anything, no windows updates, no NOTHING.

Does anyone know of a program that keeps track of hard drive writes or something, so I can see how/where this space is being used?
 
You could try installing WinDirStat. Its software that shows you what is stored on your drive visually by size
 
Nah it's not automatic updates, I have it set to check for updates but not download.

I installed TreeSize, I'm not sure how I should analyse what it's telling me. Here's an example, C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb was last modified today and is 1 gb. Does that mean it was installed today and is part of what is responsible for using up my hd space? Was it just changed slightly? No idea...
 
How much memory do you have installed? If the amount of space is fluctuating up and down by an amount of that size it just seems like normal dynamic pagefile size variations. Set a defined page file and see if the behaviour stops.
 
It doesn't seem to fluctuate, it only takes up space, I've never seen hard drive space freed up.
 
Ivan_Only said:
He is using Windows 7, however it may be WIndows 7 Auto Update if it is enabled.
Click to expand...
Windows 10 doesnt automatically download on Windows 10 because you already have it!
It does on Windows 7 and 8.1.

vrfunk said:
Nah it's not automatic updates, I have it set to check for updates but not download.
Click to expand...
It doesnt matter what you do with automatic updates, the Windows 10 installer will still download.
You can verifiy if its happening by running this.
NEVER10 - 1 click to avoid Windows 10 forever
 
I have this happen a lot from System Restore. Try running Disk Cleanup, then click on Clean up system files button in the bottom left. It will scan again, now this time click the More Options tab and click the Clean up... button for System Restore and Shadow Copies. This eliminates all but the most recent restore point; I just did it and my free space went from 7.7GB to 10.6GB. To prevent this from bloating so much in the future, you can adjust the amount system restore uses in the System Protection tab under System Properties. I have mine set at 2% (4.47GB) yet I've often cleared up 6-7GB from removing old copies, so it appears my windows install doesn't strictly adhere to this setting (Windows 7 Enterprise x64.)
 
Do you have sleep enabled? And is the page file set manually or for Windows to manage?
 
And Windirstat will easily show you what directories are taking up the most space.

That should answer your problem.
 
Nenu said:
It doesnt matter what you do with automatic updates, the Windows 10 installer will still download.
You can verifiy if its happening by running this.
NEVER10 - 1 click to avoid Windows 10 forever
Click to expand...

I don't think it's the Windows 10 installer. It does ask me to download the windows 10 pro installer for 3 gigs though, but it hasn't downloaded it yet. It's in the optional section of updates. I did download NEVER10 though, that was a nice link, thanks for that, but after disabling the Windows 10 thing, it didn't free up any space so I think that confirms that it wasn't the installer. I also ran DiskCleaner in admin mode and it only freed up like 3 mbs because I run it very frequently.

arnemetis said:
I have this happen a lot from System Restore. Try running Disk Cleanup, then click on Clean up system files button in the bottom left. It will scan again, now this time click the More Options tab and click the Clean up... button for System Restore and Shadow Copies. This eliminates all but the most recent restore point; I just did it and my free space went from 7.7GB to 10.6GB. To prevent this from bloating so much in the future, you can adjust the amount system restore uses in the System Protection tab under System Properties. I have mine set at 2% (4.47GB) yet I've often cleared up 6-7GB from removing old copies, so it appears my windows install doesn't strictly adhere to this setting (Windows 7 Enterprise x64.)
Click to expand...

I don't have system restore enabled, and I run Disk Cleanup in admin mode pretty frequently, ran it just now and it only freed up 3 megs, so it's not that.

Rav3n said:
Do you have sleep enabled? And is the page file set manually or for Windows to manage?
Click to expand...

Sleep mode is disabled. And I'm not sure what the page file is so I don't know if it's set to manual or if Windows manages it.
 
You should do yourself a little favor and read up on the page file, in short it extends your system ram, and by default Windows manages it's size and changes dynamically. Open up the System Properties and click on the Advanced tab, then click the Settings... button in the Performance section. In this next window click on the Advanced tab and click Change... button in the Virtual memory section. Here you will see if it is set for windows to manage it, and if not, what the minimum and maximum sizes are. If any of it is variable, it could very easily explain the discrepancy in hard drive space you're seeing.

On another note, you said you have sleep disabled, but maybe at some point it was enabled. It's possible hiberfil.sys is still taking up space in your C: drive, use one of the mentioned programs to identify files like this (I use treesize free.)
 
Cmd
Powercfg -h off
Frees up 2-3GB on all my win 7 systems.
 
THUMPer said:
Powercfg -h off
Click to expand...
^^ that would be removing hiberfil.sys (not that there is anything wrong with doing that).

Although I doubt it, I just cleaned out all my old radeon drivers from System32\DriverStore\FileRepository
10 gigs :). Be careful about what you remove from there though.


You mentioned earlier about C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb, and yes it should be around 1gig, you might also want to use that windirstat on C:\programdata and C:\users.

Personally I like to use spacemonger v1.4.0, it''s old but I like it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top