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jdc2000 I think the Diskdata utility I downloaded from zdnet is probable similar to to what you're suggesting. (cliffh's advice)
I looked at the files and folders and nothing looks out of the ordinary. I seem to recognise the large files and all the temporary files are gone.
Are you absolutely certain you haven't got a virus? My office just got hit with NIMDA last week, in spite of virus scanning software on each desktop and the server. The desktops were generally ok, but the server couldn't keep up with file replication and we were losing disk space at an incredible rate. See this description. We had hundreds of the .eml files described. Follow the repair instructions carefully - do the patches first. Hope it's not what you've got.
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mastman
[This message has been edited by mastman (edited 02-06-2002).]
mastman, thanks for this information.
It does sound like my problem.
I'm going to check this out now.
I'll report back in due course.
Mooghaun
Well I did a virus scan (twice) and a thorough check and it came up with nothing.
I am a home computer user and come to think of it I have neither received nor opened an attachment for months.
So the mystery is so far unsolved.
The first time I ran Disk Data, I kept drilling down through the listings until I found that the Netscape email directory was using over 150MB, the Outlook Express email was using 200+MB. Couldn't hurt to check it all out, might find some surprises https://discussions.virtualdr.com/
BTW, after deleting the trash and compacting/compressing the folders in the two email programs, the directories are down to about 2 or 3MB.
Well, it is possible that your hard drive really isn't physically filling up, and the space is just being reported incorrectly. You should run a thorough scandisk (if you can - it will take awhile, same rules as defrag, quit everything that's running first) and see if it reports any problems. Your BIOS even may be screwed up completely and it may think your drive is a lot smaller than it is... is Windows reporting the correct drive size? Maybe you ought to access your BIOS and auto-scan the IDE channels for the drive info...
Just a few random suggestions that haven't been mentioned https://discussions.virtualdr.com/
BTW, yes, you should back up your stuff NOW... depending on the problem your HDD may become unusable and if anything important is on there you're going to lose it... just be careful, because if you have a virus, it can be transferred through those backup files.
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Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
Are you using a drive compression utility? Drivespace, doublespace, or similar? Remember when you're looking for temp files it's *.tmp, not *.temp. The biggest discrepancy seems to me to be:
If you're deleting 1200dpi photos you should find you're getting space back very quickly.Quote:
I then uninstalled Photodeluxe with all my saved photos and this brought my space up to 118Mb
Try doing an a advanced find for files larger than 30MB or so(don't delete them) just find them ,this may give you some idea what large files you have.I don't remember at the moment what file ext Photodeluxe uses as default .pdd ? maybe do a search for this file type as well (don't delete them) just find them .
Just a note on nimda. You don't have to open an attachment to get it. You can get from an infected web page. It you want to take a look to see if you've got it, down load this fix tool and run it:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com...oval.tool.html
Hope you don't have it. Took me about a week to rid my machine of it.Had to keep running the fix tools(3)back-to-back.
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If first you don't succeed-visit the DR.
1. What size is the file win386.swp?Quote:
Originally posted by Mooghaun:
Well I did a virus scan (twice) and a thorough check and it came up with nothing.
I am a home computer user and come to think of it I have neither received nor opened an attachment for months.
So the mystery is so far unsolved.
2. How much RAM do you have?
3. Why do you continue to scan at 1200dpi?
4. Have you run scandisk surface scan in dos mode to verify that your HD is actually nearly full?
5. Are you sure the TEMP folder is empty?
6. Is this folder empty C:\WINDOWS\spool\ printers
[This message has been edited by lukeg (edited 02-06-2002).]
This may be obvious, but since I don't believe you specifically said that you updated your virus definitions just before you ran the virus tests, we probably shouldn't assume that is the case. Did you?
I don't know how to fix your problem, but a glitch in Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0 might be the culprit. Every so often, especially when I have a large scan or use the compress feature, Adobe PD 2.0 goes nuts and "eats" nearly 1G of my hard drive. Fortunately, I can hear it crunching away so I just terminate the task, check my HD space (yup, 1G is usually gone), and then use GoBack to revert my HD and reclaim the space. Sorry, if you don't have GoBack, I don't have a clue what to do. Just wanted to give you another line of inquiry to research ... Good luck.
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If I knew then what I know now, I would never have opened that darn computer box!
Hi everyone,I've just gone online (It's 7pm here) and will commence working through your suggestions shortly.
Thanks a million. I really appreciate all your efforts.
Mooghaun.
THE FINAL CHAPTER
Well to start, I did a thorough scandisk and defrag earler today.
Mastman and jmtjet had me concerned about the nimda virus and when I learned it could come from an infected web page I was really worried. I immediately aquired anti-virus updates but a scan showed everything was clean. My next step would be to visit symantec.com to check out the removal tool in case my anti-virus had somehow missed it.
Then I re-read the latest postings in this forum to my problem. The one that really struck the cord was Pandora'a who explained that a glitch in PhotoDeluxe 2.0 (which is what I've got) can eat up nearly IGB of hard drive when doing a large scan. That's what happened to me. I decided to follow this line first before going on to the other suggestions so kindly contributed and which may anyway have in the end given the same result.
I ran my Disk Data utility (thanks Cliffh for suggesting I download this) first to look for large files. I began by checking windows. I immediately noticed huge ~pdt files (I remembered Wonderinguy34 mentioning PhotoDeluxe files might be pdt.
So I clicked on the temp folders in Windows and it said 1,557MB.
(The allocated size is 1562). So I clicked on this and at the top were 4 ~pdt files showing, (1)382MB, (2)323MB, (3)323MB, (4)236MB. The ones after this went from 20MB to 3MB most of which were zip files or Shockwave.
I then did a Files>Folders search for ~pdt and found them as had been listed in Disk Data. I noted that the modified date was 05/02/02 which was the exact day my problem occured. So I deleted them.
Next step was to check my Hard Drive space and it came up as 1.49GB. You folks can imagine my reaction. I screamed so loudly with joy that the family came running into the room to see if I'd gone insane.
Mind you, you people probable also think I'm insane scanning in and trying to print a photo at 1200 dpi. But really, this was one of my very early attempts at scanning photos.
But why do the manufacturers and scanner reviewers make such a big thing about dpi if it's pointless using large amounts as I foolishly tried doing.
Well, my problem is finally solved thanks to the contributors here. I wish you were all living in my town and I'd take you out and buy you a drink tonight. Now thanks to you I can back to normal living again.
You know, I was thinking, owning a computer is like been in a serious relationship. Sometimes, they drive you nuts and you end up almost hating them. Then you try to work it out, and when you succeed, you love them all the more, until the next time ...
Thanks a million folks, and thanks to the people who've set up this fantastic website.
Regards, Mooghaun.
That's what I like about this board - get a few minds together working on a problem and 1t's fixed https://discussions.virtualdr.com/
You might take a look at some of the other files in the \Windows\Temp directory. If you don't want them, delete them. They were put in the \Temp directory because they're supposed to be temporary files, which are supposed to be deleted when the program that's using them is done with them.
I'd image that the ability to scan at such high resolutions would come in handy if you're wanting to blow up a very small portion of the scan. Seems to me that having more dpi to work with would give a shaper image of the enlarged portion of the picture. But it does eat up disk space https://discussions.virtualdr.com/