Bizarre Behavior

[RunofOne]

I don't remember seeing, nor reading, of anyone having this problem, so I'll
throw it out here in hopes of some feed back.

I've tried my best to maintain the security of this XP Home PC. Auto updates
of MS, auto updates of McAfee, firewall, turning off aux ports so that any
pings do not receive a response; anything I can attain in the way of
knowledge to decrease this machine's vulnerability to the so called "Dark
Side" of the net. I don't download games, music, or videos. I'm a "stick in
the mud" in that I basically use this machine for productivity. I read a few
newsgroups, no IRC, and that's about it.

After going on line this afternoon to download email and look at a couple of
websites, I broke the connection after about fifteen minutes and proceeded
to work on a Word document. I had only been in the document about five
minutes when a balloon pops up on the task bar and informs me that my "C"
drive is getting dangerously low on memory. This is an 80G hard drive, and I
routinely clean out the files. Properties usually indicate that I'm only
using about 20% of the hard drive. I took a look at the hard drive
properties and it showed that I only had about 400M of free space left! I
started checking the properties of the individual folders. Another balloon
pops up warning me of low memory. I come to the "Documents and Settings"
folder and it's showing almost 70G of Used Space! NO WAY! I opened the tree
and started clicking the individual folders and checking their properties.
All of them look normal. I close down the tree and look at the properties of
the "Documents and Settings" folder again, and now I'm suddenly down to a
little over 100M! Properties of the "C" drive are now back to their normal
parameters. I deleted nothing; all I did was right click for folder
properties (until I remembered that the cursor stationed over a folder would
give me size properties without right clicking) and work my way through the
folder tree of "Documents and Settings".

Everything is fine now, but how it got where it did and then back home on
it's own is beyond me. Any ideas? Anyone ever encounter this, or anything
similar, before. I'm curious (yellow).

[Euc1id]

I've had something similar happen the past couple of days, although not as
extreme as yours. I have had about 13G free space remaining on my 40G hard
drive for quite awhile, then 3G disappeared overnight. I didn't do anything
to cause it. The usual cleanup such as deleting TIF, emptying the Recycle
Bin, and Defragging didn't bring it back. However within the past 24 hours,
it has been magically reappearing and it's now back to13G free. I have no
idea why, unless perhaps it's the recovery feature of XP making some kind of
internal adjustments.

In your case, be sure to do a complete scan with an updated anti-virus
utility. Otherwise my guess is that Windows Explorer is "acting up". I've
had one system crash with my XP Home caused by a fault in Windows Explorer,
so it's not perfect. XP is not supposed to do that, but it does
occasionally. Also run some diagnostic tests of your hardware, particularly
your hard drive. They have a finite lifetime. I wear one out about every 1-2
years. Also run the diagnostics on your processor, and anything else that's
handy. You may not find anything, but at least it will be ruled out as the
likely cause.
Euc1id


"RunofOne" > wrote in message
...
>
> I don't remember seeing, nor reading, of anyone having this problem, so
I'll
> throw it out here in hopes of some feed back.
>
> I've tried my best to maintain the security of this XP Home PC. Auto
updates
> of MS, auto updates of McAfee, firewall, turning off aux ports so that any
> pings do not receive a response; anything I can attain in the way of
> knowledge to decrease this machine's vulnerability to the so called "Dark
> Side" of the net. I don't download games, music, or videos. I'm a "stick
in
> the mud" in that I basically use this machine for productivity. I read a
few
> newsgroups, no IRC, and that's about it.
>
> After going on line this afternoon to download email and look at a couple
of
> websites, I broke the connection after about fifteen minutes and proceeded
> to work on a Word document. I had only been in the document about five
> minutes when a balloon pops up on the task bar and informs me that my "C"
> drive is getting dangerously low on memory. This is an 80G hard drive, and
I
> routinely clean out the files. Properties usually indicate that I'm only
> using about 20% of the hard drive. I took a look at the hard drive
> properties and it showed that I only had about 400M of free space left! I
> started checking the properties of the individual folders. Another balloon
> pops up warning me of low memory. I come to the "Documents and Settings"
> folder and it's showing almost 70G of Used Space! NO WAY! I opened the
tree
> and started clicking the individual folders and checking their properties.
> All of them look normal. I close down the tree and look at the properties
of
> the "Documents and Settings" folder again, and now I'm suddenly down to a
> little over 100M! Properties of the "C" drive are now back to their normal
> parameters. I deleted nothing; all I did was right click for folder
> properties (until I remembered that the cursor stationed over a folder
would
> give me size properties without right clicking) and work my way through
the
> folder tree of "Documents and Settings".
>
> Everything is fine now, but how it got where it did and then back home on
> it's own is beyond me. Any ideas? Anyone ever encounter this, or anything
> similar, before. I'm curious (yellow).
>
>