what on earth have I done ?

[Gwyneth]

This is a 38.2 GB machine and recently it started slowing down considerably .... I finally had a look at `my computer` and found that instead of the normal 30 or so GB free space there is only 9.69 free space , whatever can have happened ?
hope someone can throw somelight on it for me.
Gwyneth:wavey:

 

[Gwyneth]

Theres some files called - no title ogg. what are these - I can`t remember seeing them there in my computer before

 

[ccrobinson]

Gwyneth, take a look at your temp directories, such as c:\windows\temp and/or c:\temp. You can do a search of files based on size, which should help you figure out what's consuming your disk space.

 

[exscentric]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg has some info on the .ogg files if you haven't figured out what they are yet.

 

[Gwyneth]

Not very clever at computer stuff...... I went to defragment drive C and find it is full of defragmented files. I didn`t defrag.yet .... How can I delete these from the drive. How did it get in this state?Should I defrag and see what happens, I`ve done disc cleanup.

 

[Brother Bob]

Someone sent you a virus. I too had the same thing happen to me and had to reformat and reload.

You need to start backing up the files you want to save on cd's before it takes your whole hard drive.

The virus you have takes more of your hard drive ever time you boot up.

 

[Gwyneth]

I have just done AVG virus scan it says no virus - but it also says sys32 change twice ?? I did system restore to earlier date to see if I could get `in front of` the problem, if you know what I mean, I went back to 1/3/07 yesterday, before I wrote in here.........:BangHead: ...... better get it to a repair man I think, unless anyone here can advise.
Gwyneth

 

[exscentric]

Could someone else have access to your computer and been downloading the files?

Back up your important data and then try deleting all those files you mentioned and see if they will go away. Have you signed up to store files for someone on the net so others can download them? Lots of possibles probably - computers are like a good mystery. Snoop till you find an answer.

Right click on some of the files and look at properties and see if that tells you anything about where they are from. From what Wiki said they are media files -- have you tried to open one (ONLY AFTER YOU BACK UP), maybe that will tell you.

Share any information you might have, others may have ideas.

 

[I Am Blessed 24]

Have you deleted all your temp files and cookies lately? That takes up a lot of space. I do it once a week.

 

[exscentric]

Also check your browser settings or options and see if the cache size has been changed to a large size. Dump the cache while you are there and see how the memory changes.

 

[ccrobinson]

I went to defragment drive C and find it is full of defragmented files. I didn`t defrag.yet .... How can I delete these from the drive.

Do you mean it's full of fragmented files? Here's a good description of what fragmented files are.

Fragmented simply means the file is not stored in one place in its entirety, or what computer folks like to call a contiguous location. Different parts of the file are scattered across the hard disk in noncontiguous pieces. The more fragmented files there are on a drive, the more performance and reliability suffer as the drive heads have to search for all the pieces in different locations.

There are no files that are specifically named "fragmented files" that you can delete. Your files will be defragmented by running the defrag program. Defragmenting files will only increase your performance, it will not fix your disk space consumption issue.

Someone sent you a virus. I too had the same thing happen to me and had to reformat and reload.

Maybe, but I doubt it.

Gwyneth, have you done a search of the largest files? If you're not sure how to do it, here are the steps.

Click Start
Click Search...
Click For Files or Folders...
Choose All Files or Folders
Click "What Size is it?"
Click "Specify size (in KB)"
Start at 100,000, which is 100MB.

 

[Gwyneth]

IMMEDIATE PANIC OVER :thumbs: :thumbs:

When I finally got around to defragmenting the machine, it said at the bottom of the report -
fragments 356
file size 17.72 GB
files that cannot be defragmented \documents and settings\gwyneth\my documents .

I had a look in my docs and .......... ` lo and behold ` there was sitting in there a film (17 minutes of it) which was 17.7 GB , it was a file I`d made of my daughters house as it was being renovated............... I had already burned it to disc, but had left it on this thing ..... I deleted the film / file and now have 26.4 free space .......... thank you all so much for advice and help.
COMPUTER ILLITERATE
G wyneth :wavey: