New
#1
5 GB just disappeared, how to get it back? (TrustedInstaller involved)
I have a ThinkPad X220 with a 120GB hard drive.
Yesterday, I used "Disk Cleanup" on the Properties page of the C drive (via Windows Explorer) and it freed up about 1GB, the resulting "Free Space" being 60.5 GB (as shown on the same Properties page).
Today, I did it again, thinking that it wouldn't do much, because I had just done it yesterday. The cleanup completed quickly this time, but at the same time, I noticed the Free Space number mysteriously going down, and it kept doing that for several minutes (even after the Disk Cleanup UI seemed to have finished). I looked at Task Manager and noticed "TrustedInstaller.exe" running, which seemed odd, because I wasn't installing anything.
At some point, I decided to do a Shut down. It said something about a Windows update running, 30% complete. Not sure why, as I didn't ask for any update. Then the shut down completed (i.e., the computer was off). Then I started it up, and it went to a screen saying update in progress, don't turn off the computer. After this went on for 5 or 10 minutes, I figured something must be wrong, so I held down the power button to shut down, and it did. On starting up again, it showed the white-on-black text screen saying Windows was not shut down properly, and I chose Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Then it didn't do that, it just restarted and then went to a screen saying the update failed, reverting... which I thought was fine, because I have no idea what it was doing, and whatever it was, I wanted it reverted. Again, it said don't shut down, so this time I let it run its course, and it eventually booted up into Windows.
This is when I noticed that 5 gigabytes had disappeared, as the Properties page for the C drive now shows Free Space as 55.5GB. 5GB have disappeared!
I'm astounded that the system can do such things that I didn't ask for.
How do I get my 5 gigabytes back?