HD Space issue (again)

I've had some help in the past in working out how to stop HD space disappearing from my puter.

Well, the help I got sorted it out for a while (I just had to disable hibernate and it disabled a humongous file)

It's happening again (from the 1.5 gig or w/e that was freed up before I'm down to 9 MB!

Pretty sure that it's pagefile.sys that's slowly accumulating data.

I suspect this may be an important file but my question is it OK to delete it in the knowledge that Windows (XP - sorry) will just make another to start the whole process again of whatever the file does, or will deleting it prevent Windows from working?
Anyone know?

pagefile.sys is basically just a swapfile, (as is hiberfil.sys, which you shouldn't have now if you have hibernate options now switched off.)
So, your windows system starts to run low on available ram, (presumably because of your habit of leaving firefox, etc running unattended for long periods of time) and starts copying stuff into the pagefile.sys which gradually gets larger.
pagefile.sys can be deleted but you lose the data for the session, In fact there are tweaks to delete the pagefile.sys on computer shutdown to avoid any sensitive information being accessed.

Considering your previous post on how Firefox was eating memory, I'd say that your xp o/s is working correctly; it's trying to preserve a large amount of information on a running system.

Now, we know you leave the pc on a long time, with Firefox running (" am away for a day or 2 when I return and use my PC it always turns out that FF is using ALL my memory and CPU.")
Be handy if you could look at what Firefox settings are & see how it's handling web cache content (menu bar on/Tools/Options/Advanced/Network)
how much disk space does it report using? Is override automatic cache management ticked, is there any application cache being used? Are any websites reported to be allowed to store offline data?

Agree with the above, having also followed your previous threads.

I will mention http://windirstat.info again as aside from checking the Firefox settings running this before and after should provide you with a graphical breakdown of file/folder space usage so comparing should highlight the difference in usage, and reinforce that its the above reason.

Am pretty sure your assessment is correct - RAM becomes an issue so pagefile.sys becomes bloated.

Cached Web Content - Your Web Content Cache is currently using 3.7 MB of disk space

Override Automatic Cache Management is NOT ticked

Offline Web Content and User Data - Your application cache is currently using 0 Bytes of disk space

No websites are are allowed to store offline data


My attempts to interpret what that all means tell me that

1. Cached Web Content is no big deal at 3.7MB
2. Maybe if I checked the override I could reduce the swapfile size BUT is their a relationship between the swapfile and pagefile.sys - no idea.
3. Offline data storage is not involved at all.


In fact the cached web ahndling is probably not an issue (unless their is a link between it and pagefile.sys.


So back to the beginning - you indicated I can delete the pagefile.sys and just lose session data (which appears to be a build of numerous sessions over quite some time. I am pretty sure this seesion dat is of 0 consequence to my puter use. So having seen this post if you still concur that I can safely delete the file that's what I will do.


MegaChintz. The problem I have with windirstat is that it requires 98MB of disk space which is why I couldn't use it last time. I should have installed it when i got rid of hiberfil but at the time I couldn't remember what are the leads, links and downloads I had been given were for.

If I can free up space again I will have to install it then for future monitoring.

I read MegaChintz's post & I think he's right - being able to examine what files, space etc might give some information as the nature of what's going on, and what differences any changes to the system could make.
I d/loaded the portable version of windirstat & installed on a usb drive - explorer reports the installation @ 2.2mb. Ordinary download size @ 630.59 KB, big difference from 98MB

Er.. If, deleting the 1.5gb hyberfil.sys made a big difference to the amount of free storage, begs to ask - what capacity is the drive itself , and how big is the pagefile.sys file? Maybe you've more or less reached the limit of what the system can store

Kinda hoping you weren't gonna answer that - it's a 40Gig HD which these days is practically like 'why bother'. Except all I use my PC for is playing Torn and maybe looking at wikipedia or train times etc these days (partly because of this problem).

It does have a bunch of family photos and my phone back-up but I haven't backed my phone in months (again partly because of this issue).

But the 1.5gig 'big difference' was really in contrast to what I had been left with before - less than 10MB, which is where I am again.

The pagefile.sys has currently reached 2.8gig

The d/l size isn't the issue - it's the drive space it told me it needed to run it that was 98MB so that's a bit confusing.

So, not enough disk space to load any diagnostic programs onto drive , probably can't even backup data to a CD-rom (800 mb spare hd space needed to be able to burn one?) Bullets don't really fit the gun here , if consider your use of the pc vs the size of pagefile.sys.
Personally I'd change settings from allowing windows to manage virtual memory, to a lower custom setting with a max of 1 gig, this would give some free disk space after restarting the pc.
Also worth checking the recycle bin properties to see the % max size of drive reserved for it.

ok so 40GB is small by todays standards. but its sufficient for XP to run and a browser to function.

Lets assume for the moment that its therefore unrelated to firefox, and if you free space, it will be eaten up fairly quickly by something else. so whatever diagnosis you do, you have to act fairly quickly.... Its also a case of yet again going over old steps.

for starters load XP in "safe mode with networking" (keep hitting f8 after you turn it on should bring up the boot menu with the option shown)

Then run a disk cleanup again. (Start->All programs->Accessories->System Tools->disk cleanup) Clear out what you can in the "Disk cleanup" Tab.

If you are still out of space after this, please can you then confirm the size of these folders on your C: drive (rightclick->properties) so we can establish if you can free space in places.

C:Windows_Temp
C:Documents and settings_"your username"
C:Documents and settings
C:Documents and Settings_"your username"_Local Settings_Temp

(torn forum wont allow a backslash in the post, so I've put a _ instead.)

If you don't know the path of your user profile folder, then open a command prompt and type "Set U" (without the quotes) and press enter

Please also confirm how many user profiles folders are listed in C:Documents and settings just in case there are more profiles eating up space, including any "Temp" profiles.

Can you also give me an idea of what programs you have installed, just so we don't miss anything else obvious!

Lastly if you free enough space, I recommend rebooting normally and running (again if needed)

https://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/ MalwareBytes antimalware (free)

Update it, Do a custom scan and include all clean-up options.

http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/

Same as- update- include PUAs etc in the scan options.

For the moment I won't suggest turning off the pagefile, as if the space gets used up, you wont be able to turn it back on again...

If you are unsure of what you find, let me know before deletion, your PC is (by the sounds of it) close to not working..

got to go, Real life calls...I will check back again soon.

MC.

Hey NT,

How's the problem doing along?

Cheers

MT

Wow, funny you should say that. I managed to clear about 300MB of home movie clips of no relevance. Then I got too buys to install the the software that was recommended. I keep thinking about installing windirstat everytime I turn on my PC but am always dashing to it and from it. Anyway, literally 10 seconds before I saw your post highlighted I got a TaskBar message alerting me to being low on disk space. Aggghhhh.

But the strangest and most worrying thing is that my puter will not let me boot up in SAFE MODE! Um, wtf. I only tried with Networking so don't know about the other options. Not sure why you recommended Networking, is it so I can go online?

Oh, don't know why I got the Low Disk Space warning just checked and have 200MB, so should still be able to install windirstat when I get a few mins.

Have been turning my puter off more often recently.

OK, gotta dash.

Will keep you posted.

NT's back! Thought the pagefile had swallowed the last 9 mb.

Think you should follow MegaChintz's advice asap, in case there's yet another reduction in available drive space. May help to find the root cause of the problem. Bit like having a car with a punctured & stopping every 800 yards to re-inflate the tye rather than fixing the puncture.

So a 49GB HDD and you've said before that there's not much RAM (how much?): Presume this is quite an old system; have you checked the hard drive to see if there are any bad blocks present? (Might NOT be advisable to use check disk to do this , if you haven't in case you lose any more space)
You never mentioned if you have backups for your files - thinking that with the relatively small size of the HDD you could do some online storage pf your using sites like dropbox, MS Onedrive etc..
Also if a significant proportion of you HDD is used to store pics, what predominant file format are they in; .BMP files tend to take up a lot of space and can be shrunk with too much loss of detail.

-I just read that the latest FF update (36,0,1) contains a fix for a "serious memory leak", if your firefox hasn't automatically updated, may be worth doing..

Finally got that installed. Ya know the sad thing is 20 years ago I was forever running and installing little tweaky and snoopy software and I loved it.

In the last 10 years I lost the knack, and I'm looking at this interface and thinking, 'Now what?'

Although to be honest, it's basically telling me the same as windows.

Everything makes quite a lot of sense.

Docs and settings is using 67% of the drive, which does seem a bit harsh at first but the majority of it is in My Documents being pics, clips and tunes. All big files.

Although there is 345 MB of runesc@pe that my PC just cannot handle and has never been used since I first installed it anyway, that can go.

The Application data all makes sense.

I'm still finding myself returning to the 'Files' on the Har Drive proper and 92.2% of these are the pagefile.sys file weighing in at 2.7GB.

Program Files is only 2.1 GB predominantly Avast and Open Office (700MB between them) with the Companion for my Phone coming 3rd a fair way behind.

Hang on hang on. Just going back over Docs and Settings and Application Data. I have both Spybot S&D and SuperAntSPyware and MalwareBytes (although I'm not seeing that, maybe I deleted it, can't remember), but the point is that SB S&D is taking up 10.5 GB, and pretty much 10.5 GB of that are Logs, specifically the Scanner Log.

Does this mean anything to you guys?

All you need is Avast and MalwareBytes. Get rid of that other stuff.

You can also get Auslogics Duplicate File Finder, Disk Defrag and Registry Cleaner for free at auslogics.com

You can always delete those programs after using them.

"SB S&D is taking up 10.5 GB, and pretty much 10.5 GB of that are Logs"
You're sure that's Gigabytes not Megabytes?? and that's the scanner.log file.

Yeppers, take a look. It's a pretty terrible pic but you can make it out a couple of lines below the highlighted one:

[image: i1068.photobucket.com]

Hey NT,

I would suggest loading SB S&D, first, UNinnoculating, (ie undo its changes)- then lastly uninstall it- it will leave your browser in a more predictable state this way.

Then check the logs are all gone. You may have found the main culprit!

After that, apply any MS updates that are pending (if any given XP is end of life) then lastly clear bit more space by dumping any really old update installation/rollback files- see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956324 for how to do this- its near the bottom of the article.

lol looks like Spybot is the cause of all your issues from that screenshot.

I really don't get how people get so many issues with windows; install adblock in your browser, get a decent antivirus/firewall and stay away from dodgy torrents (at least read the comments first lol). Then you don't need to bother with SUPER SPYWARE SAVER 2015 etc - which is probably causing more issues than fixing.

MegaChintz,s recommendation for Windirstat certainly looks as if it's come up with the goods here (it looks a damn useful tool), and hopefully you've followed his advice. Spybot looks a culprit for using disk space
I notice there's 1 or more .iso files on the drive - a disk image your keeping for some reason? Or maybe part of how your phone backup perhaps.

Still doesn't answer the question of why you have a large pagefile.sys file though, would be interesting to know how much RAM is fitted in the system

Will have to check out the ISO, I don't recall it.

Windirstat is in fact an awesome bit of software. And would be even awesomer if I knew how to use it as a pro.

Now don't laugh but there is 1.5 GB of RAM. Need to check to see if it's still available. If gone obsolete it'll be too expensive to upgrade for met. Belarc Advisor tells me it's DIMM. Rings a bell but hazy now, this PC is maybe 10 years old I think, which is about as long ago as when I was still taking notice of puter developments.



As for SB S&D, guys and gals, I can't bring myself to delete it yet. This was the first malware software I knew about (http://www.safer-networking.org/) I've been using it for 15 years. It was the first, it was free and it protected our puters before anyone else did, even before lavasoft's Ad-Aware I think. I can't just bin it like that. It's actually a really good malware program other than this bloat issue.

Of course if it continues to create problems that I can't control with the settings (and tbh, I couldn't find the settings last night when I looked, but I was rushing) then it will have to go. Meanwhile I have deleted the scanlog file and am gonna watch what happens.

Thanks for windirstat, that really is a cool bit of kit MegaChintz, and thanks for helping out on this everyone else.