C Drive reports low disk space repeatedly

[kaj]

Over the last few days I have repeatedly received a "C Drive is low on disk space" message. The drive WAS a 150 GB partition of a 1TB drive. I increased the space to 160GB and instantly the disk filled up again. :shock: Any case a few days ago it was only a third full...
I have done disk clean up, defragged, run system file checker, run Malwarebytes (clean), glary utilities and also WinDirStat. This tells me that <Unknown files> are taking up 128GB of the space!! I have turned off hibernation and deleted the file for that. I have turned off acronis backup in case that's doing it. It has got to the point hwere I can't download CCCleaner because there's not enough room in the temp files I guess. I have on the C drive just Windows, a few apps installed in program files, but just about everything else is stored on other partitions - docs, music, tv, video, downloads, apps etc. Something is clearly writing massive amounts to the drive but I can't find out what because I can't open the <Unknown files> that WinDirStat reports - apparently I, or it, don't have access to them. Incidentally there are no System Restore Points - somehow that was turned off.
I've tried everything I can find on the forums. I really want to avoid a fresh install. I'm thinking of restoring my acronis backup but I'm unsure when this all started.
Can anybody help?

 

[richc46]

Welcome
If not already tried run a full anti virus scan (be sure to update first)
Download and run a full scan with malwarebytes.
Did you update before running these two?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/129976-hard-disk-space-free-up-recover.html

 

[kaj]

Thanks for replying so quickly. I have run full anti virus scans with Malwarebytes and Microsoft Security Essentials. I'm quite fastidious about making sure everything is updated, Windows 7 itself too. Thanks for the link too; I have already worked through that list, which is why I'm getting really frustrated!
Any other suggestions?

 

[Mike Connor]

Might help you....

Disktective, freeware disk-space reporting tool for Windows

<http://www.disktective.com/>

http://www.snapfiles.com/screenshots/diskinvestigator.htm

<http://www.snapfiles.com/screenshots/diskinvestigator.htm>

Regards....Mike Connor

 

[kaj]

Thanks Mike. Still the same this morning. I ran Disktective as you suggested. It doesn't seem to show anything that isn't quite bona fide, and doen't indicate that the drive is full from what I can see (screenshot attached -tried to generate report but html file refused to upload here- attached). However WinDirStat does report this (also attached). My problem now is, how can I find out what these unknown files are and get rid?
I did try Disk Investigator but Im afraid that's all greek to me!

 

[OldMX]

Disable System Restore and see if free space comes back?

 

[Mike Connor]

Hmmm....something is obviously generating the 128 GB of stuff.

Working with low level tools is always next to impossible if you don't know much about the stuff.

I would try this;

Best FREE Partition Manager Freeware for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 32 bit & 64 bit. EASEUS free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

<http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm>

have a look at the disk with the tool and see what it says.

Make sure you have a backup first.

If ncessary delete the partition and reinitialise it.

Regards....Mike Connor

 

[kaj]

Disable System Restore and see if free space comes back?

May try tomorrow but I 've only just turned it back on - there's no space left on the drive for it to work.

 

[kaj]

Hmmm....something is obviously generating the 128 GB of stuff.

Working with low level tools is always next to impossible if you don't know much about the stuff.

I would try this;

Best FREE Partition Manager Freeware for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 32 bit & 64 bit. EASEUS free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

<http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm>

have a look at the disk with the tool and see what it says.

Make sure you have a backup first.

If ncessary delete the partition and reinitialise it.

Regards....Mike Connor

Thanks again Mike. WinDirStat reports <unknown> has gone up to 136GB today!
Easeus just shows C Drive as full basically. I used it the day before yesterday to increase the c drive space by 10GB which was promptly filled.
Tomorrow I may restore an acronis backup & see if that gets rid, failing that a repair install.

 

[kaj]

C Drive filling up update

As an update, I restored my c drive partition from my acronis backup and the drive is back to its regular size. Of course the same thing may happen again, but if it does I'll actually reinstall.
As a matter of interest after the restore I was having problems with my graphics card driver, and realised the the card wasn't seated properly (probably happened when I changed the monitor last week) ; so whether that could have caused my problem I don't know.
Now all I have to deal with is "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)" on the UMBus Root Bus Enumerator in Device Manager. Always something sent to try us!
Thanks to both of you for trying to help me out.

 

[ryeu]

Hi guys and kaj, I am experiencing exactly the same problem. Something is consuming my hard drive space as soon as I freed up some space. For example, I just freed up 10GB 2 hours ago, and now 2.5GB has been filled. This happened within the last 2 hours and the computer was not even being used at all.
This is happening for the past week and driving me crazy. Any help is much appreciated.

 

[Golden]

Ryeu,

Download, install, run and then post a screen capture image of C: using WinDirStat.

WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics

Regards,
Golden

 

[ryeu]

Hi Golden, thanks for your reply. Following your instructions, attached is an image of C drive.
I noticed that there is 315.4GB in Windows Temp folder, so i drilled down a bit more, and found a bunch of files taking up so much space, shown in the second image.
What are these? I used Disk Cleanup this morning but guess these could not be not wiped out by the cleanup.
Could you please let me know how to safely clean these without any damage to other components, and how to stop this from happening?
Am using Windows 7 x64.
Thanks in advance. Really desperate here.

 

[Golden]

Hi,

You use FireFox correct? The etilqs files are temporary database files used by Firefox (etilqs = sqlite spelled backwards) and are usually purged when you close FireFox.

Delete them manually after you have closed all instances of FireFox. I'll need to do more research to find out why they aren't being purged automatically.

Regards,
Golden

 

[ryeu]

Yes, I use Firefox. I will delete these etliqs files manually.
Looking forward to your research.
Thanks.

 

[gregrocker]

Check your Firefox settings. If you can find the bad setting, reset to defaults or uninstall and reinstall the latest version saving only your Favorites exported/reimported as an HTML file.

 

[ryeu]

I uninstalled Firefox as suggested. Without reinstalling it, I want to monitor the free space see if this would do the trick. After uninstalling it, I had 28GB free space. 2 hours after, I am at 26.6GB, 1.4GB filled up without doing absolutely anything with the laptop.... Strange.....

 

[Golden]

Can you track where this extra GB came from? Does WinDirStat show it?

 

[kaj]

Just an update on my situation, which was the original report on this problem. I haven't ever had a re-occurrence since my restore from my acronis backup. But I never got to the bottom of it.

 

[ryeu]

Sorry, took me longer than expected to do this. I just wanted to make sure I got a good case to show. Below are what I have done and the results. This is a bit long, so please bare with me.
- I ended up with 26GB free space last night after uninstalling Firefox (no reinstalling after that). I used my laptop for couple of hours this morning and lost another 4GB free space to 22.1GB. I did not save or install anything during this time period, just plain web surfing.
- so, 22.1GB free space was the starting point where this exercise began. I also restarted whenever I ran the WinDirStat.
- At 4:43PM, I ran WinDirStat - screen shots attached with *443PM_* in file names
- At 6:24PM, I ran another WnDirStat - screen shots attached with *624PM_* in the file names
- results - another 1.6GB data was used between start and end time, now down to 20.5GB, while "Windows/Temp/<Files>" folder increased by the same GB.
- I tried to figure out which file size increased, but apparently the increase was as a result of increases and decreases in size of many files within this folder, including etilqs files.

I have also attached a screen shot on my analysis...

Let me know if I don't explain properly or anything else I can do. Thanks.