Ran out of memory? I don't think so...

Q_Goest

My daughter's computer has a 280 GB hard drive. I looked at it and it seemed to be using about 29 GB, but she's getting a pop up that says it's low on memory and has less than 0.5 GB left.

I went through and deleted some programs she wasn't using. Got it down to about 26 GB so at least the low memory warning isn't popping up any more. But clearly the hard drive isn't close to being full.

I suspect a virus or something may have locked out 90% of the hard drive.

Any suggestions as to how to check and what to do about it?

Thanks in advance!

jtbell

Are you sure that refers to hard-disk space and not to RAM?

JaredJames

It could be RAM or more importantly for Windows (which generates the error I believe you have) is low virtual memory.

If you have 280GB hd and only used 26GB, that certainly isn't the problem.

In My Computer, right click the drive and select properties, look at the useage graph. That will tell you exactly what's being used.

Q_Goest

I'm sure it's refering to the hard drive. The hard drive size shows 289 GB with only 11 GB free space remaining (ie: 278 GB used). And that's after I've deleted a bunch of stuff.

If I go to where programs can be added/deleted, it shows about 26 GB is being used for programs which looks about right given what I know is on the machine. So the space being used for programs is tiny compared to the hard drive size.

There are also about 500 music files so maybe another few GB there. Other than that, there's not much on it. I can't come close to finding a total of about 278 GB. It's more like 28 GB give or take.

Can a virus do something like that? Make a hard drive appear full somehow?

Any programs on the web that might help?


Edit: One more note. I've run a scan using AVG Free and Spybot but they didn't come up with anything. There have been viruses on the machine before but as far as I know they've been eliminated.

JaredJames

What OS is it?

There's no virus, it's just full of crap from your daughter.

Let me know the above and we'll track it down.

Programs won't take that much, so the problem is unlikely to be there.

If you pull up the user files (C:\Users\...) and right click it you'll see how much space that folder is taking. Once you see where a chunk is, follow this to track it down.

Stephen Tashi

There might be big log files and temporary files that eat up space. I can't tell you how to check for them since I don't use Windows.

JaredJames

I'd be very concerned if my log and temporary files were eating 200gb+ of space.

My money is on the daughter downloading music / films that aren't immediately obvious.

Q_Goest

Thanks. I did clean up temporary files, and did a "Free up space on your hard drive" under "Performance and Maintenance". That freed up a few more GB but not much.

I'll have to wait till tomorrow now. She's playing internet games....

Pythagorean

If you try to transfer something over 4 GB from or to a FAT32 file system, it will produce the "not enough space" error even when both drives have all the space in the world.

If you have a jump drive or external that's formatted as FAT32 that's associated with this issue, reformat it as NTFS and try again.

JaredJames

It's been clarified there's only 11gb of the 280gb left. So the hard drive is lacking, which would start to interfere with virtual memory.

rcgldr

Assuming this is windows, run Windows Explorer (click on start / programs / accessories / Windows Explorer), and do a search / all files and folders / what size is it? ... and select specify size, and enter 1048576 to create a list of all files >= 1 GB in size. This should help you find any huge files that are taking up space.

Borg

Q_Goest,

Make sure that you have also turned on the "Show hidden files and folders" setting so that you can see everything.

Pythagorean

hrmm... backup and reinstall windows =)

JaredJames

Just make sure you don't backup all 200+ gb of crap.

Q_Goest

thankyou thankyou thankyou. That was the key I needed! I opened up users as you pointed out, right clicked on properties, and found a "public" folder in there with 199 GB of TV shows she'd recorded! lmao I'm pretty sure they were recorded automatically when she set something up to do so.

Anyway, that solved the mystery. I deleted those and now she's got more space than she knows what to do with.

Until that is, she decides to record more TV shows.

Thanks everyone for the input!

mathman

I use a program called "Tree Size Free", which is available through CNET. It will give you a list of all the folders and the memory used on any specified drive.

moogoomonkey

haha lmao