Drive Space Temporarily Disappears, Mysteriously – I’m stumped

**bigdatl12** · 07 Aug 2011

I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 (laptop), running Vista HomeSP2, 32 Bit

Two days ago, after clearing history and cookies the lowdisk space warning balloon appears. Icheck C drive and it indicates I have 5g of free space remaining. I have a 160g hard drive and after most recent download still had 43g free spaceleft. I ran disk cleanup and was able torestore about 5g’s of space, but thismysteriously disappeared within minutes and the low space warning came back on. At this pint I rebooted and WA-LA…all 43g’s we back and everything seemedto working normal. About 15min later thelow space warning balloon comes on AGAIN!! I’m down to less than 5g’s. Iimmediately attempt a system restore only to find out…I HAVE NO RESTOREPOINTS!!

I’m stumped because I’ve goggled and read a lot of similarpost about this problem and tried several solutions but none have worked tokeep my free space intact and available. This is vital because when I drop to less than 5g’s of space my computeracts erratically, freezes then blue screen crash! What’s especially puzzling is that AFTER I REBOOT, MY DRIVE SPACE IS ALWAYSRESTORED TO THE CORRECT AMOUNT of 43g’s (which is different from any post I’veread concerning this problem) BUT IT DISAPPEARS RAPIDLY WITHOUT ME DOINGANYTHING. This occurs whether mycomputer is ON or OFFLINE!!

I’ve already:

Ran Avast antivirus - nothing

Ran Malewarebytes - nothing

Ran Registry Mechanic – corrected low and medium leveladware

Ran PC Tools Spyware Doctor - corrected minor infections

Ran Trendmicro Housecall - nothing

Ran Windows Check Disk (Scan Disk) - the volumeis clean

Ran PC Doctor (Dell support Center) - passed all test

Ran Windows Memory Diagnostics Scan - found no errors

System Restore showed no restore points, disabled systemrestore and deleted all shaodow copies

Disk Defrag - useless

Disk Clean up - no space to be gained.

PLS NOTE: WHEN I RANMISK SPASCE MANAGER (AT DELL SUPORT CENTER)… SCAN REVEALED 43G’S OF AVAILABLEFREE SPACE…BUT AT THE EXACT SAME TIME WHEN I CHECK C; DRIVE ON MY COMPUTER,IT SHOWS ZERO g’s.

I don’t have an external hard drive to back up many photo’s,video’s, work projects, music, and other vital info and I’m trying to avoid afactory restore if at all possible! Anysuggestions? Please Help. Thanks.

**usasma** · 08 Aug 2011

These are usually misbehaving programs. You can get clues (sometimes) by doing this:

Task Manager:
Also, you can monitor the system for excessive resource consumption. To do this, open up Task Manager by right clicking on the Task Bar.
Then select the Processes tab.
Then select the "Show processes from all users" button (in the lower left)
Then select the View menu item, then select "Select columns"
In the Select columns window, place checkmarks next to I/O Reads and I/O Other.
Click OK to accept the changes.
Resize the Task Manager window so you can see the most of the columns.
Wait for the system to freeze/take up the resources.
Look at all of the columns to see if there's anything that looks excessively high - if so, let us know the Image name of the process.
NOTE: If the image name is svchost.exe - right click on it and select "Go to Service(s)" and let us know the Services that it highlights
FWIW - System Idle Process is supposed to have high CPU readings - anything else with high CPU readings is an issue.

Look for excessive activity in I/O Reads and I/O Other

Please run these reports even though you're not having BSOD's. They'll give us info on the system that may point to the troublesome app: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions

BTW - are you using Process Monitor? That will cause similar behavior.

**Slammer** · 08 Aug 2011

I also recommend you run sfc /snannow in command prompt as an administrator. You seem to a very knowledgeable user, based on the steps you've already taken, so I'm sure you know how to do that properly. That's all the advice I can give about this, so if it doesn't work I'll leave you to usasma.

**whs** · 08 Aug 2011

I would also run a schtasks in cmd to see whether there is some odd task scheduled that could do that. I also would temporarily disable all startup programs and see whether that yields anything.

**Slammer** · 08 Aug 2011

Good idea whs. Try just running your computer in safe mode and see if the problem still happens.

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Drive Space Temporarily Disappears, Mysteriously – I’m stumped

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