phantom hard drive use

heres a strange thing ive been battling with.

i have 4gb allocated for my windows partition. in safe mode i have 1.5gb free. but when i'm in regular mode i have 72mb free. if i check the folder properties of all the folders on C: the size of the files is 3.3gb but the size on disk (after compression i'm assuming?) is 2.28gb. when i check the properties of the c drive it shows 3.83gb used. (of 3.9 availabile.. leaving the 72 mb)

now i'm no mathematician but even with the different rounding and values of bytes and bits and such this large ammount of missing hard drive space should not go un accounted for.

to make matters worse this magic space is increasing.

the virtual memory is on the other partition so its not that.

i was wondering if anybody else had run up on this.. i suppose i could have a virus or adware.. or what not.. i run a pretty tight ship but i suppose anything is possible.

*edit* now that i think of it.. it really shouldnt be that either.. whats driving me nuts is the contents of the drive arent adding up to the size supposedly used by the drive. even a virus that is running around cloning files would still increase the size of the files actually on the drive.. its this discrepancy thats driving me mad. **edit**

Any thoughts would be apreciated.

Thanks

Jesse

i'm not insulted.. you dont know me.. so you dont have any idea what, if any, capabilities/knowledge i have.

i dont actually know how to check for C:\pagefile.sys..

if i go into the command prompt and type Dir C:\ there is no pagefile.sys listed.

I dont know any other way to find it.. all system and hidden folders are turned on in the folder properties.

I changed the location of the "virtual memory" by right clicking my computer, properites, advanced, settings (under performance), advanced tab, Virtual memory.

Thats the extent of what i know.

i think there is a small memory leak or misallocation when windows does a disk cleanup and offers to compress unused files to save disc space.

Recently when i've done that its reduced the available size rather then increase it.. this is something i just noticed recently when the drives size has dipped below 100mb.. now its very obvious with there being only 5mb free on the windows partition. (windows really gets pissy about that too)

sadly i think reformatting is my only option... which is unfortunate.

I would really like to know where that magic missing space is though.

The file size when you select all folders on the C: drive and right click and hit properties is:

Size: 3.3GB (3,549,794,959 bytes)
Size on disk: 2.33GB (2,507,371,835 bytes)

yet right clicking on the C: drive icon gives me:

Used: 4,179,898,368 bytes from a capacity of 4,194,856,960bytes

and aparently this is perfectly normal as i'm discovering right now.. because my other drive shows 43gb used if i click all the files but 49 if i click the drive.

so i will just run partition magic and make the dam partition bigger..

though that still leaves me with some program or another eating up huge ammounts of hard drive space..

Thanks man.. but i havent had system restore turned on since i got this thing.. 4gb has always been enough for a windows partition untill i got this laptop.. since then i've been on a space saving crusade.

so far ive moved or deleted tons of folders full of files i dont need. all the help files were deleted long ago.. i've removed all the windows update uninstall folders (they are saved on the other partition though) and it goes on like that. i spend as much time using this computer as i do clearing C:..

about a month ago i had 1.7gb free on C:.. then one day i turned it on and was greeted with a *you have less then 200mb please clean up a little you slob* messages and its been getting worse ever since.

i think the culprit is a mix of norton anti virus and autocad 2005.. both of which seem to make extensive use of temporary files.. especially autocad.. and autocad is an interesting program... they code alot of menu's in but some of them dont seem to ever do anything.. one such menu is the one where you can change where cad looks for files.. when i discovered that even to the program was installed on D: it has still infested C: with files i tried changing the place it looks for those files to D: (and then moved the files there)

i've gone through three installs of cad because it doesnt listen and still looks in the old spot.. and then starts crashing and acting weird.. its anoying to say the least.

anyway that compression utility is no doubt constantly cleaning up the temp files created by these two programs and causing my issues.. because my desktop computer's 10gig windows drive hasnt even hit 2gb used yet.. despite the storage drives having something like 300gb of stuff..


J