Freaky computer = Not happy me!! Help!!!!

[BloodyWinker]

Hello again clever computer knowing people who know more about computers than I do,

My problem today is either my computer has some serious issues with itself and needs to see somebody or it's haunted.

When I first put the thing on today it was fine (or maybe just pretending to be fine??). I downloaded a couple of things off of K-Lite, fine, did a check with Spy Sweeper which showed nothing up (except a couple of minor things that nothing will get rid of) and went to the Disk Defragmenter to check how much free space I had and it said 18%. I then decided to put some of my stuff onto a CD (including a movie) so to free up some space on the Hard Disk but after doing this and then the the computer started having a laugh!!

A thing kept popping upat the bottom of the screen saying "Low Disk Space, blah blah blah"!! I went to Disk Cleanup and delete everything that came up on there and went back to Disk Defragmenter and it said free space was 6%!!

What the f**k?!!

So I restarted the machine and then ran Ad-Aware and did a Norton full scan and used Spy Sweeper again but nothing showed up on any. I went back to Defragmenter again and it said I had 9% free space. Left it a little while and went back for about the fifty eighth time and it then said I had 16% free space. I wish it'd make it's damn mind up!!

Running Ad-Aware again (just incase it missed anything) and I just checked the free space and it's gone down to 14%.

What is going on with this thing?!! Can someone give any ideas what my problem is other than having this real urge to smash my mouse into my eye socket and being slightly over weight. Does my computer need to see a GP or a Psychiatrist or is there a natural homemade remedy I can give it??

Any help much appreciated. Seriously please. Seriously I'm begging.

And please don't laugh at my absolute computer patheticness. See that doesn't even make any sense does it.

[stecbine]

Well my only real advice I can give you and I'm serious I'm not saying to be funny.....

Don't use Kazaa or any of it's versions, the Fastrack network is littered with fakes, viruses, RIAA Spies and everything bad you can name.

[Monty Burnz]

Seems like it's really f'ed up. You may have to reinstall windows or get a new hard drive. The "little things that nothing will get rid of" are bigger problems than you may think. Run a search on them to find out how to get rid of them.

[Omyn]

It sounds like you just dont have enough space on your hard drive.

When you make a CD, you need tons of space in temporary files when you copy or burn it.

If you scanned for viruses, and you scanned for spyware, you should try uninstalling anything you do not need or havent used in a while.

Try deleting some downloaded files or setup files you dont need anymore, also, you can right click your recycle bin and hit properties, from there you can adjust how much space you want reserved for the recycling bin, which may just be enough to get you back in the game.

For those little things he was referring to, probably a harmless tracking cookie, or maybe something small like alexa.

[streamlina]

Whatcha Talkin Bout Willis!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mountain_rage]

First check your device manager to see if your harddrive is functioning properly. The once thats done you can either check a harddrive diagnostic tool off the internet im sure a website like www.twocows.com has them and test your hard drive if it shows that you have no errors then I sujest running your machine in safe mode and see if the same problem arises as in safe mode viruses usually canot execute. If the problem isnt happening in safemode then the problem is either a virus or your getting conflicts from other software or hardware. Oh if you dont know how to get into safe mode hit f8 just before the windows bootscreen shows up.

[BloodyWinker]

Cheers dudes for advice, I'll see what happens. There is definately something going on coz I checked my disk space earlier and it said 27% and I just checked it now and says 12%.

Friggin stupid thing.

Thanx again anyway.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Stop downloading stuff. That takes up disc space. lol

[charlesmelissa]

Going back to what Omyn said, that is probably what is happening. When you burn a disk, whidows makes a copy of the disk to be burned on the hard drive and then burns it to the CD. If you have under 800 megs free, you will get the low disk space. Look at the free megs and not the % free, that tells me nothing. There is probably a temp file on your hard drive that you can get ride of that has part of that movie on it. Delete what you can to make enough room to burn. You can also get rid of extra restore points in windows- they are huge and that can free a lot of space. Fast track (Kazaa, etc. are old technology to download, check out bit torrent, it is great. Keep as much free room as possible on your hard drive- at least 50%, by moving downloads to a cd or DVD.

[DwarfBaby]

Going back to what Omyn said, that is probably what is happening. When you burn a disk, whidows makes a copy of the disk to be burned on the hard drive and then burns it to the CD. If you have under 800 megs free, you will get the low disk space. Look at the free megs and not the % free, that tells me nothing. There is probably a temp file on your hard drive that you can get ride of that has part of that movie on it. Delete what you can to make enough room to burn. You can also get rid of extra restore points in windows- they are huge and that can free a lot of space. Fast track (Kazaa, etc. are old technology to download, check out bit torrent, it is great. Keep as much free room as possible on your hard drive- at least 50%, by moving downloads to a cd or DVD.

I had this problem with Alcohol 120. I hit some option that stoped it from deleting the image once it was burned. You might also want to check your swap file in Control Panel>System>Advanced Tab>Performance and make sure its somwhere between 512 megs to 3 gigs, Or around %2 of your total hard drive space.

[black_magiic]

I believe you are thinking of http://www.tucows.com

[bobhss]

Two ideas: 1) Open Windows Explorer (Windows Key and E) and then navigate to the C:\Windows\Temp folder and delete everything in there. 2) If it's growing and shrinking like that and you did a Norton full scan you can never go wrong doing a second online scan. I use 3 different ones (a bit of paranoia and some find stuff the others don't), http://housecall.antivirus.com, http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan and http://www.bitdefender.com/scan. If all three of those (plus your updated Norton) don't catch any virus and you still have problems, then that idea of reformatting is good.

[moneoa]

If its applicable in your situation than its worthy to point out if you use
Norton Protected Recycling Bin that can take up space as it keeps a backup of most deleted files. Tell it to empty protected files by right clicking on the Recycle bin.
This will clear up space. As well Windows Xp System Restore takes up quite a bit as well
as it saves mutiple points for restoration. You can clean it out from the control panel under
System-System Restore. Depending on how its set up it can steal quite a bit of space
especially if you have alot of restore points saved up.

Half the stuff you burned might be floating around as backup info for norton or sys restore

[DwarfBaby]

I agree with moneoa
If you’re using XP, this sounds suspiciously like a system restore deal.

I bet if disable system restore and delete the save points your shifty HD space problems will vanish.