New
#11
Shadow Copy?
Could it be shadow copies?
Huge hidden file in system drive
-
-
New #12
The obvious place to check is $Recycle.bin, and RECYCLER, just in case the recycle bin for all users has not been emptied yet, the next place is the $quota file, and virus quarantine files. The browser cache and safe browser bloom are also hidey holes where big files lurk, depending on which browsers are used, they are found in different places.
Very large files are found by defragmenters I recommend Puran defrag for a quick analysis
Puran Defrag Trial and Free Edition Download
Also Easy Clean by Toniarts has a disk usage pie chart which fairly clearly shows where large files are hiding
ToniArts EasyCleaner - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com
-
New #13
No, to see everything you also need to 'show system files' , then you can view everything on the drive.
-
New #14
That's not always true - there are files and folders that are superhidden.
Look in:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Yesterday I would have told you that you can see even more hidden stuff if you create a new value called:
SuperDuperHidden
and give it a DWORD value of 1,
But I have since realized it would be foolish to give that advice today :)
-
-
New #16
I gave up and reinstalled. Problem solved. Maybe I had a virus. who knows ... and now I,m rid of it who cares.
I have had enough 'mishaps' to have made things easy for myself to be able to reinstall quite easily, without having lost anything.
I really do wish my mobile broadband dongle would work with linux, I'll be dead and buried before I can rid myself of Mycrapsoft.
Thanks anyway guys for the ideas, Cheers!
-
New #17
Microsoft VirtualStore
I know this post is closed, but I just had a similar problem and eventually discovered that the cause was the VirtualStore, it may have been the same problem you were having.
Basically, when programs are run with non-administrative priveleges and they try to save files to protected Windows folders in Windows Vista/7 (such as C:\ or C:\Program Files\) they are instead placed inside the 'VirtualStore' folder for that user. This means the files are instead hidden in something like C:\users\[your username]\appdata\local\virtualstore\program files\[your program that created the file]\, usually without any indication to the user that this has occured.
So, while your program might have seemingly saved a big file to C:\file.ext as you requested, it's actually been hidden under your user path above by your OS, and the OS has created a junction point on the C drive named C:\file.ext which points to the real file.
Ideally you're able to delete or move the junction-point file and it will take the real file and the junction point with it, but if it's been created under another username, or if you're not running the delte (or move) command with administrative permission it may not work so simply.
I recommend WinDirStat to track down the weird files, and then searching for them under C:\users\[your username]\appdata\local\virtualstore\ - do a search for VirtualStore and junction points for more info.
Hope that essay helps someone!
Quote
Related Discussions