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Two unrelated PC issues (most likely SOLVED)
SteevL
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
As the topic says, I have two separate PC problems. One involves my own PC, and one involves my fiancee's.
First problem: my PC, which has 2 500 GB hard drives, is running on Windows Vista. A few months back, I noticed the free space on the main hard drive was slowly going down. I first noticed it when it was at around 190 GB after being at 200 GB the previous week. It stopped around 170 GB, where it'd fluctuate each day, give or take a gigabyte. At this point, I stopped worrying about it.
A few weeks later, I was ripping some of my CDs to my secondary hard drive when I noticed the main hard drive was suddenly up to 220 GB. I don't remember uninstalling anything. I did install the new version of Opera which automatically uninstalls the previous version, but I have a hard time believing Opera was taking up 50 GB of space.
Over time, I noticed the space was dropping gradually again. I'm back at about 174 GB of space free. I'm completely baffled as to where this space is coming from and going to.
Any ideas for me to play around with? I'm at work right now, but I'll look into any suggestions once I get home. Aside from the Opera thing, the only other thing I can think of is that I recently configured my Xbox 360 so it could stream in music from my PC. By doing that, WMP had changed my PC so it would go into a sleep mode rather than hibernate mode when I would click on the sleep button. I changed it back a few days later, and I suspect that may also coincide with the 50 GB jump in free space somehow, but I really have no idea if hibernate does that.
Problem 2: I built my fiancee a PC last year. It's been running fine up until now. She was visiting down here this past weekend, and when she got back to her apartment yesterday, she found her PC would not turn on. I did some troubleshooting over the phone and found that the PC was still plugged in to the surge protector and that the power supply in the PC was switched on and lit up. She said when she hit the power button in the front, nothing happened. When I told her to try switching the power supply off for a bit, then switch it on and press the power button, she said the blue LED in the front flickered and she heard the fans whirr for probably less than a second, followed by nothing.
Unfortunately, she lives 300 miles away, so I can't inspect it myself at the moment. I visit her almost every 2 weeks, and I won't be going up there until July 18th. The only things I can think of is a possible power surge/lightning strike damaged some components, or some of the wiring somehow came loose. I'm not sure how likely the lightning strike theory is since it's hooked up to a surge protector. On the other hand, it is connected to an ethernet cable which I stupidly did not connect through the surge protector, but she gave me the impression that both the DSL modem and router were working. Any suggestions to me on what to look for when I visit? Or things I can suggest to her to try that don't involve opening up the case?
Thanks everyone. My apologies for how little information there is to go on here.
First problem: my PC, which has 2 500 GB hard drives, is running on Windows Vista. A few months back, I noticed the free space on the main hard drive was slowly going down. I first noticed it when it was at around 190 GB after being at 200 GB the previous week. It stopped around 170 GB, where it'd fluctuate each day, give or take a gigabyte. At this point, I stopped worrying about it.
A few weeks later, I was ripping some of my CDs to my secondary hard drive when I noticed the main hard drive was suddenly up to 220 GB. I don't remember uninstalling anything. I did install the new version of Opera which automatically uninstalls the previous version, but I have a hard time believing Opera was taking up 50 GB of space.
Over time, I noticed the space was dropping gradually again. I'm back at about 174 GB of space free. I'm completely baffled as to where this space is coming from and going to.
Any ideas for me to play around with? I'm at work right now, but I'll look into any suggestions once I get home. Aside from the Opera thing, the only other thing I can think of is that I recently configured my Xbox 360 so it could stream in music from my PC. By doing that, WMP had changed my PC so it would go into a sleep mode rather than hibernate mode when I would click on the sleep button. I changed it back a few days later, and I suspect that may also coincide with the 50 GB jump in free space somehow, but I really have no idea if hibernate does that.
Problem 2: I built my fiancee a PC last year. It's been running fine up until now. She was visiting down here this past weekend, and when she got back to her apartment yesterday, she found her PC would not turn on. I did some troubleshooting over the phone and found that the PC was still plugged in to the surge protector and that the power supply in the PC was switched on and lit up. She said when she hit the power button in the front, nothing happened. When I told her to try switching the power supply off for a bit, then switch it on and press the power button, she said the blue LED in the front flickered and she heard the fans whirr for probably less than a second, followed by nothing.
Unfortunately, she lives 300 miles away, so I can't inspect it myself at the moment. I visit her almost every 2 weeks, and I won't be going up there until July 18th. The only things I can think of is a possible power surge/lightning strike damaged some components, or some of the wiring somehow came loose. I'm not sure how likely the lightning strike theory is since it's hooked up to a surge protector. On the other hand, it is connected to an ethernet cable which I stupidly did not connect through the surge protector, but she gave me the impression that both the DSL modem and router were working. Any suggestions to me on what to look for when I visit? Or things I can suggest to her to try that don't involve opening up the case?
Thanks everyone. My apologies for how little information there is to go on here.
SteevL on
Posts
Part of these issues could be the hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys. If you re-enabled hibernation, the system will create a hiberfil.sys file equal in size to your physical RAM, and the pagefile can increase and decrease based on how much Virutual memory is in use.
Both files are stored at the root of your system disk (usually C) and are system and hidden. You cannot delete them from explorer.
Also, grab SpaceMonger. The link is for the free version. When you have it analyze your disk, it will give you a graphical representation of your disk space usage. You can see exactly where the big stuff is.
Problem number 2 could be a lot of things. Could be as simple as loose RAM that needs to be reseated. Could be a processor problem (dead, not seated properly, etc). Check the RAM first. It also could be a blown motherboard or faulty power supply.
I don't believe it - I'm on my THIRD PS3, and my FIRST XBOX360. What the heck?
The second could be anything, but if lightning hit the phone lines, it normally damages the last component in the series. Therefore it'd go through the modem and router then hit the network card.
Ugh, she had just told me 2 weeks ago when I was up there how her nearby aunt's and cousin's computers were all damaged from a lightning strike, some of which came through the phone lines. And then I said something about how her PC's ethernet port is possibly vulnerable to the same thing. I'll be kicking myself if that was the cause.
Thanks for the link to the program! That's some pretty cool stuff; I knew I could count on someone here to direct me to something cool like that.
I'll have to keep an eye on it for the next few days. The pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys total a combined 4.6 GB, so that's definitely not where all the space has gone. I always knew my Steam folder took up a good chunk of my hard drive, but actually seeing how much is in there is something else. 70.9 GB! That's half of the whole program files folder.
Anyway, I'll update the thread when I learn more about the possibly lightning-struck PC.
I'm still working on the first issue, and the second issue...well, that's still about a week away before I can do anything.
But anyway, 5 days later and I'm down to 160 GB, and I'm not seeing where that 15 GB of space has gone. Is there some sort of program out there that can track this sort of thing? Perhaps take a snapshot of hard drive contents and then compare it to another snapshot so I can see where this extra space has gone?
I have also tried the disk cleanup feature, which doesn't account for all that disappearing space.
Downloaded Defraggler yesterday. I started running it sometime around 9 AM and it finally finished around 4 PM. I occasionally monitored it and watched at first in horror as my free space dropped from 160 GB to abotu 100 GB. By the end, though, it was up to 226 GB free, so it looks like defragging works! I honestly didn't think it would free up 60 GB. Guess I'll be defragging more often. So, problem 1 is solved.
I'm still not looking forward to figuring out the fiancee's PC issue though.
Try cleaning out old system restore points. Disk cleanup, and then the tab at the top, and clear all but the most recent restore point. Also lower the slider in the system part of the control panel.
When you get the chance, make sure it spins and spins freely and that none of the other cables are getting in the way.
I guess that narrows it down to either a busted power supply or a blown motherboard, right?
For what it's worth, the power supply's on/off switch has its own LED which still lights up when it's switched on.