0

I am currently having a delima where my system drive is filling up until 0 bytes left, this causes programs to start crashing.

enter image description here

Restarting the computer returns my 7GB (I know its not much left anyway :D) of free space back. It is getting annoying so i want to find the culprit. I ran WinDirStat after a restart and when the memory is full and took a screenshot comparison. I could not find all 7GB. The only difference is "System File" is bigger by 3.3GB.

enter image description here

Any ideas? Currently my hard drive is at 0 bytes so if you have any suggestions for me to try. Oh! no installing of new programs because i cant download anymore even to another drive since my browser is installed on C and it needs to cache the download. and also most programs to install needs a restart which makes it difficult to find.

I thought maybe it was a windows update but i have deffered my updates to a later date (because i am currently have a metered connection) and there is no anomaly in my data consumption where i was deducted 7GB

Community
  • 1
Jack
  • 161
  • 2
  • 7
  • [Disk cleanup in Windows 10](https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4026616/windows-10-disk-cleanup) – DavidPostill May 31 '20 at 07:22
  • @DavidPostill the utility does not show a file above 1MB. and even when i ran it drive is still full :( – Jack May 31 '20 at 07:24
  • Did you select "Clean up system files" as instructed? – DavidPostill May 31 '20 at 07:27
  • [Free up drive space in Windows 10 - Windows Help](https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/12425) – DavidPostill May 31 '20 at 07:28
  • @DavidPostill Yes I did. It finished quickly. – Jack May 31 '20 at 07:28
  • Run Disk Cleanup as an Administrator and provide a screenshot of what can be removed. Without this additional information your question cannot be answered. – Ramhound May 31 '20 at 07:39
  • @Ramhound Here is the screenshot [Part 1](https://ibb.co/cxBhJ6f) and [Part 2](https://ibb.co/JHTzBLq) – Jack May 31 '20 at 08:00
  • Showing disk usage by extension type is dangerous, because it could lead you do look for and delete all files whose extensions are marked as those who take up the most space. From what your screen shows, you can safely run Disk Cleanup as admin and remove all Windows Update packages. You can also select all the .msp and .msi files and remove them. This will net you about 17GB of free space, but the mystery about your 7GB disappearing remains unsolved. Is your drive a regular HDD or an SSD? –  May 31 '20 at 08:00
  • @Didier im using an ssd, If im going to free up more space it will just be gobbled up like that 7GB. But that is a nice tip what are those msp and msi files? – Jack May 31 '20 at 08:04
  • By the way after the Disk clean up, i freed about 800MB – Jack May 31 '20 at 08:06
  • Before you go there, right-click on your C drive in Explorer, go to Properties, then Tools, and choose to Optimize your drive. This will trim this volume on your SSD, and allow Windows to take stock of the real remaing free space on it. Restart your PC when it's done. –  May 31 '20 at 08:06
  • @Didier I finished optimizing, Restarting would revert back the lost 7GB and it would take about a day to be gobbled up again is that allright? We cant do any checks again until that time. Should i go ahead and restart? – Jack May 31 '20 at 08:11
  • 1
    Yes, restart your PC to see how much free space Windows thinks is really available. Is your Recycle Bin empty? How much space devoted to it in its Properties? Same for System Restore and Hibernation (if you use it)? –  May 31 '20 at 08:59
  • I was wondering about hiberfil.sys as well. if OP has 8GB ram but only 7GB disk space, the hiberfil couldn't fully allocate, and its process crashes before it can finalize it with the filesystem, so a restart effectively "erases" the partial file. just a wild guess though. could also be a change in pagefile settings where there is insufficient room I guess. based on the behavior, it sounds likely that its part of windows causing the disk allocation. whats weird is that the reboot fixes it. – Frank Thomas May 31 '20 at 09:41
  • @Didier Apologies for the long reply, I just did another restart and emptied the recycle bin. And as expected i got back my 6 GB ish of storage back (a bit short from 7GB but i would say within margin – Jack May 31 '20 at 14:00
  • @FrankThomas I do not let my computer hibernate, Its even disabled. I have 16GB by the way and my ram sit at around 5-6GB during my normal tasks. – Jack May 31 '20 at 14:01

1 Answers1

1

Some program is eating up your disk space by writing continuously to a file(s). Since rebooting returns this space, it's clear that the program never commits the file by flushing it or closing, so the file is certainly some temporary file.

You may check in the temporary file folders in Windows, typically found in two locations:

  • %systemdrive%\Windows\Temp
  • %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp

As these files are never closed, you might find several of them in one of these locations, but they will most likely be of zero size. Their names might contain some hint of the process/product that created them.

You may also check in the Resource Monitor, Disk section, which processes are writing continuously to the disk. This which might locate the malfunctioning product.

If this is not enough, you could try using the free Autoruns for Windows to selectively disable startup processes. See this answer for more information.

harrymc
  • 455,459
  • 31
  • 526
  • 924
  • Hello sir, i just restarted my computer so it might take a while again for my next update, But checking Resource monitor, "System" is awefully suspicious at 80 000 bytes/s i will closely monitor if it evers go down, Our culprit takes is time eating my 7GB (few hours) – Jack May 31 '20 at 14:04
  • 1
    These temporary files should remain after a reboot, although most likely with zero size, so you could already have a look at the above folders. – harrymc May 31 '20 at 14:06
  • What will i be looking in the Temp folder sir? I do recognize some files names, but im pretty sure these programs were there before the problem started. – Jack May 31 '20 at 14:10
  • 1
    If the files are there, there would be one for each time you booted. Look for zero-sized files whose names have the same pattern. – harrymc May 31 '20 at 14:12
  • Yes i do see them, should i delete them? Names are wctxxxx.tmp where the x are numbers. System still write above 100k B/s to the disk – Jack May 31 '20 at 14:25
  • 1
    These `wct*.tmp` files may be connected to OneDrive, but are probably not the problem. Try to delete all files in these folders and let me know which ones are impossible to delete because they are open by some process. You may use [Process Explorer](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer) to locate the process(es). – harrymc May 31 '20 at 14:48
  • Under the userprofile temp i was able to delete all, under windows\temp [several files](https://ibb.co/58vyjXZ) were not deleted. tmp folder say i need admin (even though i am). Conviniently the other says which program uses them, should i stop the process? and delete them ? Meanwhile i have 4GB left of space – Jack May 31 '20 at 15:03
  • 1
    Depends on the process. Check in Resource Monitor if one is writing all the time to the disk. – harrymc May 31 '20 at 15:09
  • I was able to delete some files unusually (it was from logitech which might have finished using the files) and what remain is basically files from 2 processes. [Image](https://ibb.co/4MrnfYq). Basically files creativeCloud and adobegc are tied to adobe processes which are not in resource monitor(disk) but in task manager process which is at 0% disk. the other two files are from WmiPrvSE.exe which i cannot find in resource monitor and task manager process. – Jack May 31 '20 at 15:19
  • Could be that your MFT (Master File Table) got bloated, too, but it's a b*tch to keep it under control when it's gone AWOL. Try a "chkdsk /f c:" command in admin mode, and let your computer restart so that the chdsk can be performed. It might take a while to finish, but you should wait it out. –  May 31 '20 at 15:36
  • Check disk finish rather quickly. so i guess its a waiting game to see if it still persist. – Jack May 31 '20 at 15:55
  • One thing to check about MFT (I doubt it's the cause of your problem, but it doesn't hurt to be thorough): open Regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem and look in the right-hand pane for an entry named "NtfsMftZoneReservation"; if it's not there, create it as a DWORD. It should have a value 0 (zero) or 1, at the most. If it's 2, or 3, or 4, double-click on it, and change it back to 1. That will reserve 12.5% of your actual free space for MFT, which is where Windows keeps tabs of the files on your system. Restart your PC when you're done. –  May 31 '20 at 16:04
  • For `dllhost.exe` see [article](https://www.howtogeek.com/326462/what-is-com-surrogate-dllhost.exe-and-why-is-it-running-on-my-pc/). The other one, `System`, can be many things. Do also a deep antivirus scan by Windows Defender and Malwarebytes. – harrymc May 31 '20 at 16:12
  • @Didier Value is already set at 0 – Jack May 31 '20 at 16:24
  • dllhost.exe was a temporary thing, just so happens to pop-up at that time. 4 processes is the normal, 2 are chrome, system, and Nvtelemetry. I did a full scan with Bitdefender. and even did a special scan by bitdefender that boots the pc to a bitdefender OS to scan windows drive (this was before posting this question, another full scan would take 1-2hours since i have a few drives). – Jack May 31 '20 at 16:28
  • One thing you can try to "fool" Windows into recalculating your true free space: go to, say, the Fedora Project download page, and try to download the latest ISO several times in a row, until the total size reaches approx. 5 to 6GB. You should get a "no space available" warning at some point, but it would be interesting to know where that point is, and if Windows starts provisioning space for your downloads even though you've supposedly run out of free space. –  May 31 '20 at 16:48