C: drive inexplicably fills to capacity with unknown data

[smappdi]

I just installed XP on a brand new core 2 duo system. After I leave it on for about a day, C: fills up entirely, apparently on its own.

The weirdest thing is, any time I reboot, the extra data disappears and the free space returns to normal, then slowly reaccumulates again.

The paging file is located on a different partition so it's not that. I usually have Symantec Corp installed, but I switched to Kapersky by recommendation of a friend and it found two viruses - one of which was a downloader. It removed both and I figured that was that, but the problem persists.

Anyone have any ideas short of a reinstall?

 

[dmroeder]

Do you still have any Symantic stuff installed?

I read about someone having the same problem and he found that there were some corrupt Norton files. He said that simply uninstalling it and then re-installing it solved the problem for him. Just a thought.

 

[smappdi]

Do you still have any Symantic stuff installed?

I read about someone having the same problem and he found that there were some corrupt Norton files. He said that simply uninstalling it and then re-installing it solved the problem for him. Just a thought.

I have Symantec reinstalled now because Kapersky kept erroring out for yet another inexplicable reason, but it did it when using Kapersky too. Plus I've used Symantec for years on multiple computers and it's never done that...

 

[Guest]

Try using WinDirStat http://windirstat.info/ to see what taking up the disk space.

Grumpy

 

[smappdi]

Try using WinDirStat http://windirstat.info/ to see what taking up the disk space.

Grumpy

Thanks to your suggestion, I located the problem. There is a single 6+ gig trace.log file in C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\WMI that is written to every minute or so.

I have indexing service switched off. I used FileMon to see what was writing to it, and all I can tell is that the process MsMpEng.exe:1136 is the culprit. Unfortunately I have no idea what that is. Googling it wasn't much help. Any clue what is creating this needless enormous log file?

 

[Guest]

BootViz. Here's someone that had the same problem. http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/1004352469/ShowPost.aspx

Grumpy

 

[smappdi]

BootViz. Here's someone that had the same problem. http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/1004352469/ShowPost.aspx

Grumpy

rgr that, I found the same info after a bit of googling. I'm in the middle of fixing it as I type, so that should hopefully do it.

Thanks for the help mate

 

[ur6beersaway]

FOUND THE ANSWER - PROBLEM SOLVED, FOLKS!

I thought I would post this just in case anyone else out there runs into this exact same nasty problem regarding the apparently "Bulimic" WMI\trace.log file that gets FAT (because of running BootVis previously) while the computer is running and then "purges" the mega-gigabyte file after it reboots...

Here is the solution: I just went to the following: Start > Run > Regedit... and then changed:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WBEM\CIMOM\Logging = 1
to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WBEM\CIMOM\Logging = 0



Just so you all know...

Changes to the logging level registry value take effect immediately.
No restart of the WMI service is necessary.

Logging level Description

0 No Logging
1 Log only errors
2 Verbose Logging (default)

The really amazing/scary thing about this; is that many people may actually have this problem and they’d never in a million years know it. Why? Because it has absolutely no visible effect upon the system's performance - nothing runs slow or acts erratically. Had I not been running that Disk-Mem Panel program 24/7 like I usually do - I'd never have found out about it either!


All credit to "PC magazine discussions" post
http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/1004352469/ShowPost.aspx

 

[lesteron2]

They tried to do too much smart stuff and screwed some of it up.