Unexplained, continuous disk space shrinkage - Please Help!?

Question

I recently noticed I had almost no space left on my C drive. So, I deleted every program I didn't need. Initially, this resulted in more free space, and was confirmed by checking the C drive properties. However, as I continued to delete, the space decreased, the exact opposite of what should have been happening. After that, I left my computer for a couple of hours and upon returning, received an alert that I had low disk space and needed to run a cleanup. I was shocked out of my mind. The computer said I had less than a couple hundred bites of space left, when just hours earlier I had had almost 5GB. Why is the space fluctuating regardless of my actions? Thanks for your help. This is so strange.

Answer 1

could be a virus. run the disk cleanup utility and see if the problem is still there

Answer 2

Most likely, you have a virus that has infected your System Volume Information folder. This contains all the information about your drive, where files are located and how much space you have.

Now, If the virus is infecting the computer, then it is overwriting all your available space with fake and bad data.

If the virus is just infecting the Volume Information, then it is making the computer think that your drive is running out of space.

Either way, it is a virus.

You need to delete this by running GOOD Anti virus software. Free ones won't do it. You need something like BitDefender or Kaspersky or even Norton.

After that, you need to run a Anti Spyware scan. Try Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware.

Finally, you need to perform a disk cleanup, and then defragment.

Answer 3

Hey!

The exact same thing happened to me! I couldn't work it out. Go to Add/Remove programs and remove anything you don't use, if you haven't already done that. One reason that as you delete the files, your space decreases is that you're not actually deleting the file; just sending it to the recycle bin. If you run disk cleanup, then it should come up with a list of thing you can do, one of which is empty your recycle bin. You can also delete your cookies and history on your internet browser as that takes up space. It's also possible that you have a virus, that takes up a lot of room.

Hope that helps!