HDD space diminishes to zero within 10 minutes of start

Hi,
This just started happening recently: When I start the system, disk space in my computer is around 10-15Gb. Pressing refresh every few seconds shows the disk space diminishing continuously, until 0 bytes remain, at which point most things act as though there is no hard drive space and you have to restart. Restarting restores disk space to either a few GB or back up to the 10-15GB mark. During the 10 minutes or so that you can use the system before a restart is required, resource monitor shows that the image "system" is reading 1-4MB/second and writing 15-30MB/second to disk. Starting in safe mode allows enough time to run scans in McAfee, PcTools Spyware Doctor and AVG, but none of them find anything. Using Selective start in system configuration with minimal processes and no startup programs seems to reduce the problem, but not eliminate it completely.

My specs are listed below, not sure whether it has anything to do with my SSD, which is the main OS install HDD... not sure what other details to provide but let me know if you need to know more.

Thanks for your help!

Darn. This forum just ate my long reply. I'll make a short one.

Have you ever installed Microsoft BootVis? Long story short, it had a bug in it where it was creating 200GB log files, preventing Windows from having room to load.

Thanks for your reply. No, I've never installed that...

Wow, never even heard of that.

sounds like a crazy virus, or faulty hardware/connection.

I would first off try a diskchk see if you hard drive is dead

if it passes then I would check your power supply and make sure its still properly functioning (with mutimeter)

Then I would go to safe mode and try to do a full sfc /scannow

if that works
I would reboot to get back online
get malwarebytes/spybot search and destroy/super anti spyware/virus scan updated then reboot to safe and run them all

If non of these catch anything (my guess is they will)

Reformat hard drive and re-install windows..

thats what i would do anyways.

good luck man would like to hear if any of these work/show errors

1. If you have an AntiVirus program installed, then
a. disconnect form the internet
b. run the av program.

2. Download from MalwareBytes.org (NOT malwarebytes.COM) their AntiMalware program.
When you go to download this stick to the left hand side of the websites since on the righthand side are advertisement for similar products..
The program you download should end up with the name mbam-setup.exe.
3. Run Malwarebytes antimalware program. This is a FREE program. If the program you run asks for money to get rid of viruses, then you downloaded the wrong program. Malwarebytes is highly respected.
4. Oh yes, first run the quick scan version, then go back online and update malware bytes then run the quick scan again, then run the full scan. The quick scan will take less than 20 minutes. The full scan will take about 2 hours.

This will probably take care of your immediate problem.

Can you do a search for files over 1024MB on the C Drive? Maybe this will help us nail down the issue if we can find files that are massive in size (multiple GB). This may be due to 1 large file, or multiple smaller being created.

Thanks for your responses. I've run full several check disks, including a full 5-stage one which I initiated from an elevated command prompt. No problems were found. I installed malwarebytes and ran some scans...

karlsnooks said:

1. The quick scan will take less than 20 minutes. The full scan will take about 2 hours.
.

It took about 2 minutes to quick scan and 15 minsto full scan, tried in both safe and normal modes. The quick scan found one issue in the registry, which it quarantined. Unfortunately, however, the problem persists! System image is still writing upto 30Mb or more per second to disk, restarting restores disk space back to some extent.

I haven't tried testing my PSU, its a fairly new one and I'm not having any other issues, so I wouldn't think it was that. The system is overclocked from 2.66 to 3.66 GHz and has been running stable for weeks, even with some intense gaming, but I guess I could try reverting to standard settings to see in that helps. Any other suggestions?
Thanks.

Aegis said:

Can you do a search for files over 1024MB on the C Drive? Maybe this will help us nail down the issue if we can find files that are massive in size (multiple GB). This may be due to 1 large file, or multiple smaller being created.

The only notable thing is an 11GB file called "cputime", which is an XML filed under program files\common files\pctools\sMonitor ....

Edit:
I think this has something to do with PCtools Registry Mechanic... googling on this subject it seems im not the only one, so I'll see what uninstalling it does...

Uninstalling PCTools Spyware doctor and PcTools Registry mechanic, and then manually deleting the 13GB folder in program files\common files\pctools that remained, has solved the problem. I now have nearly 20GB free, and system image is no longer writing 30MB/second to the hard drive. Silly Pctools! If you are running windows 7 x64 and have any PCtools products installed, just check that they are not hogging lots of disk space and generally slowing things down!
Thanks for your help Aegis, I wouldnt have thought of looking for large files had you not suggested it.

Came across this thread Googling "system space diminishing"

Anyway, I am running XP and this problem just started a few hours ago exactly as the OP describes it. I even removed a large game at the first warnings of low HD space, ate up 5 GBs in 15 minutes

Some interesting points to note....

When Windows trys to clean the hard drive (when I get the ballon pop-up warning me of low hard drive space) compress files, emtpy recycle bin, etc. ...the system hangs

I just cleaned...perhaps not?... a virus I had call Anti Virus Soft

It doesnt seen to affect how the system is running overall. I am still able to web browse, listen to files, watch movies, etc. Nothing is slow, no pop ups.

I give up



I'll be watching this thread for answers and contributing anything else I come across