"Documents and Settings" increasing in size?

Trying to help a friend in another country who is complaining that their C drive is running out of space, even though she has not added anything to it recently.
She showed me her screen on webcam, and when she opened up "Documents and Settings" it was quickly increasing in size until the C drive was full. It went from something under 1Gb to 7.7Gb and then stopped. I have never seen this happen before.
Could anyone help please?

 

I'm assuming she opened Explorer and performed a right-click>Properties on this folder. That's just tallying the content in there.

It is most likely tied to the Temporary Internet Files, assuming she's taken no measures to clean this out. Under Documents and Settings, the path is UserName(whatever it is)\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Folders. This is typically hidden, you need to unhide it - at the root (i.e. C:\) level with Explorer open, select Tools>Folder Options,>View, under Hidden Files and Folders, select Show hidden Files and Folder and the Apply to All Folders button. Do this if you definitively want to verify it's the problem before doing anything.

Otherwise, my simple recommendation is to download CCleaner, install it, and run it. I've never run into a problem with it. If the drive is too full to handle this, sweep out the TIF locations manually by Start>Control Panel>Internet Options, under Browsing History select Delete. A secondary dialog box will pop up, the main one to choose is the top one, the others are typically optional with respect to space recovery.

Blue

 

These are two small, free programs that might help you figure out what is filling up the partition; may not help on the how or why. They both do essentially the same thing in different formats.

JDiskReport: http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
WinDirStat: http://windirstat.info/

 

Apart from above suggestions, I recommend you to use "Disk Cleanup" function provided by Windows (Open My Computer -> Right Click on the drive that you wanna clean -> select Properties -> select Disk Cleanup)

 

Sorry Guys. Should have mentioned that she has run CC Cleaner, Tune-up 2007 and JV16 together with disk cleanup, and deleting Temp Internet files. already and nothing makes any difference.

@CatFan432. Many thanks for the links. Will get her to try those next.

Thanks to all for the advice. Keep it coming if you can.

 

Her webcam is not set to capture all the time is it? Also she could try the demo of DiskState (used to be Raxco but may not be now). It has a 30 day trial which would allow her to drill down through the directories to find the culprit.

Also the free Process Monitor allows you to see what is writing to what.

Graham

 

Webcam setting's? Possible BINGO? Or too obvious Graham?

Is she utilizing webcam soft - http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/webpublish/fwwebcam.html
This might get you thinking kennyboy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_quota


Steve

 

Astonishing piece of lateral thinking Graham. I just never thought of it, but somehow I doubt she has any of that sort of software installed. ( At least not knowingly) I will check anyway. Process monitor looks interesting, but maybe too advanced for her. It is incredibly difficult to help her at such a distance, especially considering the time difference also, and her comp knowledge level is pretty minimal.

@Steve. The Wiki article is certainly food for thought. As I say, I dont think she is knowingly using any capture software, but I will try and get her to check.

Thanks to all for your input.

Ken

 

I would try FOLDER SIZES. It has a no-restriction 30-day trial. It drills down and shows you with either a pie chart or bar graph where the data load is. It would be a snap to figure out what's going on and where the data actually is. I highly recommend this software.

Genady

 

@ Genady. I have downloaded and sent the program to her with full instructions. Tried it myself, and its very useful.

Many Thanks. Will report back to all when I hear.

 

@kennyboy - I don't do lateral . As Steve says, probably too obvious...but I do like obvious.

@Genady - I also like Folder Sizes. Thanks for the info .

Graham

 

One more detail that you might know already - how quickly does that space get allocated? Indirectly that will indicate where the problem may reside.

Blue

 

Just to update you guys after your kind help.

I think I bombarded her with too much to do. She sort of got confused over it all, and decided that her best course of action was to recover from the HP hidden system partition on her machine. Thankfully, she did back up her data partition, so hopefully she wont have lost much except her Application settings.
Sure I will hear more about it soon, but wanted to thank you all anyway.

Ken