Maintenance :: Files With Curly Braces Taking Up Too Much Space
Nov 15, 2013
There are these files with filenames beginning and ending with curly braces taking up too much space in my SSD main OS drive. They are located in the 'C:Windows' directory. Does they are safe to delete? I suspect something bad (virus perhaps), but I don't know. There are other files like these, as shown in the screenshot below, but they don't take up as much space as these recent ones. Are they needed by the system? Are they from a bad program?
Recently I've encountered a problem whilst trying to clean up my HDD (it was filling up way too quickly and I wanted to get rid of some unwanted games/programs), and I noticed a problem with file sizes of even small programs.
For a start, I am a massive FSX simmer, so that's why there's so many FSX addons in my screenshots.
Anyway, I use "iOBit System Care 6 Ultimate" to clean up my laptop, and I was trying to use the inbuilt uninstaller to get rid of some programs. This is what happened:
Now, I know that all those programs DO NOT take up that much HDD space, considering the hard drive in this laptop is currently only 500GB. I can almost guarantee those programs DO NOT take up those huge amounts because 1: They are reasonably small addons and 2: Because on my old laptop, they never took up that much space.
So I also tried Revo Uninstaller, and this was the result:
Now, notice the top result? The "Carenado Cessna Skylane HD Series FSX"? Well, that's DEFINITELY not 50GB, that's 100% wrong in all fronts. I took a screenshot to prove so:
Yeah, that's TOTALLY 50GB right there
So, last but not least, here's my HDD space/free space:
Note that only the "Windows C: and Recovery Drive F:" are part of the HDD, the other partitions are part of my external 1TB HDD.
Weirdest part is that, the files DON'T take up that much space when I right click - properties in Windows Explorer. Now, I'm not sure what's the go but it's definitely odd. I can't get legitimate sizes from neither Revo or iOBit, and it's really annoying.
Also, programs like "Alan Wake" and "Adobe Master Collection Creative Suite 6" show up as the normal file size, yet ANY Flight Simulator X addon shows up as a huge amount?
I noticed yesterday when I tried to install Adobe Creative Suite that my new SSD C: drive was only showing around 50GB of free space left, when I know that there should be around 130GB left.
I installed TreeSize. Here's a screen shot.
There's 96.3GB in a "DUDownload" folder which is inside a hidden folder. The largest file is 94.6GB(!!!) "Reserved.DynamicUpdate"
I'm thinking it could be the update to Windows 8.1 (which I've postponed a couple of times) but nearly 100GB for an update seems a bit much...
I'm running Windows 8, clean installed about 2 weeks ago onto a brand new SSD. I want my space back!
I've been using Windows 8 CP for about 3 months now, and I'm a bit shocked that my 100Gb partition is almost full. Take note that I have a separate partition for multimedia files other than for OS. I'm also running Win7 on a separate drive and so far it has only taken up around 40+Gb in a span of a little over a year. So I wonder, does Windows 8 really take up that much space really fast? is it normal? I've already done cleaning up the disk, deleted unused update files, deleted as much trash files I could find.. But still, all I could free is <10gb of space.
Is there any other way I could free more space? Is there something wrong with my Windows 8? Or is it really normal that it takes up space that fast?
I found a partition tool which allows you to allot free space from one partition to another, but I'm not yet sure whether to use it or not. I guess I just need to hear other people's opinion first.
I recently installed a new ssd and did a fresh install of windows 8.1 on it. I am now using my old hdd as my main data drive in my laptop caddy. My problem is I did not back up my data on my hdd and format it. So I need to delete the "windows" , "program files" and "program files (x86) " folders from that hdd to free up some space.
I understand I have to give ownership to those folders for me to be able to do delete the folders. I have tired the methods suggested by this guide Take Ownership of a File, Folder, Drive, or Registry Key in Windows 8 I tried both of those commands
(To grant currently logged on user ownership of) takeown /F "full path of folder or drive" /R /D Y (To grant administrators group ownership of) takeown /F "full path of folder or drive" /A /R /D Y and it was succesful, however I still couldn't delete the folders.
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4500U CPU @ 1.80GHz 8Gb Ram 1Tb harddrive
but sometime system.exe takes up as much as 80% of the CPU. and it does causes the mouse pointer to stutter/ hangs. Even-though Power plan is set as "High performance"
But the problem is, the windows explorer is taking up 20% CPU all time even peaks to 25-30%. when i go to taskmanager and press end-task(windows explorer) the laptops stops making the loud fan-noises and also the CPU usage is back to normal
(i hope the language in the screenshots are no problem) common terms are: beschikbaar = avaible, geheugen = memory, snelheid = speed, in gebruik = usage,
SOLVED: 1) Open C:Windows/Temp 2) Delete all the data 3) Open task manager 4) Terminate explorer.exe 5) Start a new explorer.exe 6) Problem solved.
As you can see from the picture, Windows Explorer is taking too much RAM memory and it is slowing down my computer. I am fighting with this for 3 days with no victory.
So a a day ago I woke up, turned on my computer, and was surprised at how long it took to turn on. It took, like, 30 minutes to get to the desktop screen (I have Pokki so it goes to metro for a seconds and then automatically goes to the desktop).
It took its sweet time trying to load steam and I ended up cancelling the load. Nothing loaded except for Launchy, not even the Pokki start button. I was surprised so I turned it on again and it kept going slower each time; I shouldn't have kept restarting, but I was stupid.
Anyways, I left the house and when I got home I restarted it twice before I decided to just let everything load. I was able to close the Steam startup, something I'd been trying to do for some time, but the computer had booted so slowly and the computer had lagged so badly I'd not been able to. I couldn't even open the task manager because when I moved the mouse down to make the taskbar popup it would lag. When I right-clicked it would take a minute or two to open the box and when I clicked on "task manager" it wouldn't open because the program would time out. There would be a Microsoft error pop-up box when it timed out. When I would get it to open it would take a long ass time to load and it crashed a few times.
Anyways, I decided to just let it load, it took 2-3.5 hours to open everything. I opened Advanced System Care Ultimate and ran a virus check and then I went to sleep, when I woke up it said that the check (a full scan) had run for 8 hours and there were no problems according to the program.
Things were still kinda laggy, but the speed of the computer was the same it had been when it as first laggy. So, unusable laggy, but not as bad as it had gotten. Also, it said that Windows 8 hadn't been activated and when I tried to activate it Windows said it couldn't activate it at the time.
The message left (after being there the whole night), but things were still laggy (oh and this is not the first time I have installed Windows 8 so during the night I also left it to delete the old windows.old folders, it would say that it kept finding new items. So, even the deletion of things was sloowwww). I turned on Skype and even though the internet was connected it didn't connect. I turned on the troubleshooter, but it would time-out. I opened Google Chrome and it actually opened! When that happened Skype started to work and, even though things were still laggy, I thought things were getting better. I saw a video.
I left the house, but I left everything on as Advanced System Care Ultimate checked for malware (after having run the antivirus check the previous night). When I got home the internet didn't work, but the computer was almost as fast as it was before (its got 4 years, and it recently fell, but there hadn't been any problems until that day. ACTUALLY, I don't know if this started before or after it fell, it wasn't from a high place, but the loading screen had been lagging for some time).
I ran the troubleshooter and it worked this time, it said that the Diagnostics Policy wasn't working. So, the internet stopped working in the 8-9 hours I was gone. Pokki still hadn't loaded, I went to PC settings and I tried to change the Lock Screen for no reason and it didn't work. I tried changing the account picture and that didn't work either. I'm at a loss, not sure whats happening to my computer, but its almost as fast as it once was.
My 60 GB C: drive ran out of room. The only thing installed on it is Windows 8 and whatever pre-installed programs came with my computer. I ran WinDirStat (WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics), a directory statistic tool and found two very large folders: C:/Windows is 22.2 GB and C:/ProgramData/Microsoft is 17.2 GB. This doesn't seem right. Can I free up room in these or are they both necessary? I read that windows 8 should take up around 20 GB, not 40 so how might I got about freeing up some space?
Also, I updated from Windows 7 about two months ago.
My PC boots up in 10-15 seconds, but then it sits at my desktop with everything functional for about 10-15 minutes before my startup items (Battle.net, Spotify, DNSCrypt, etc.) actually start loading up. Even after the items have loaded up, Windows Update continues to tell me that the service is not loaded and that I should reboot. I have downloaded the .zip from the forums including all the default services reg files, ran them all to return to default, even ran Tweaking.com Windows Repair, still the same issue.
I'm writing here with my Desktop, as my Laptop is completely useless right now.
The Problem: Windows Explorer hogs up CPU up until it crashes (15 - 30 seconds after). I cannot recall anything I might have done to change the laptop; it just happenned overnight.
OSystem: Windows 8 Laptop
HijackThis Report:
Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.5Scan saved at 12:40:59 PM, on 2013-11-29 Platform: Unknown Windows (WinNT 6.02.1008) MSIE: Internet Explorer v10.0 (10.00.9200.16537) Boot mode: Normal
[Code] ....
I'm ready to try anything, as long as its not "just reformat"; I cannot reformat - too much stuff in there.
I am using Windows 8 x64. I have a few software applications and one or two IDE's installed in drive C(system drive where my Windows is installed). Now my C partition is of 68 GB now suddenly I am seeing that almost all the space in drive C has ben used up and I am only left with ~6 GB of free space. Now when I am in drive C and select all the files and folders and check what is the space that it all takes up, the size returned is only 43.3 GB(check the attachment sc_shot1). But when I view C drive from MyComputer I only get ~6GB of free space shown to me(check the attachment sc_shot2). So if all the files and folders in C only take up 43.3 GB where is the rest of the 68.3 - 43.3 =25 GB. Am I being attacked by a virus or worm ?? I am using a licensed copy of QuickHeal Internet Security 2013 and I have scanned drive C with it, it reports no infections. I have also tried using the "cleanmgr" utility and clear up some space by deleting temporary files, but that at max gives me back ~1GB of free space.
I"ve installed windows 8.1 from fresh on a seperate parition on my macbook pro retina 2013 via Apple's bootcamp.
I allocated 40GB which when formatted is 37GB
But now I'm downloading Call of duty on steam which is 14GB however on my hard drive apparently I've only got 5GB left..
Is there a way to free up space or to see what on earth is taking up soo much space..
Ideally I want to buy Battlefield 4 on origin soon but that needs 30 GB space, obviously I'll delete the call of duty game but how can I get all my space back.
So recently i bought a refurbished/used Samsung ultrabook (NP540U3C-A01UB )
One of the features is that is has : (500GB with 24GB ExpressCache - Technology) Which I don really understand.
I've also noticed that the system has a lot of partitions that are taking space and are largely unused. I've had the computer for about a month and i use it everyday almost and so far a lot of the partitions havent been used.
I don't see a reason why to have those.
So can i Erase them??
Please notice 2 disks. I know the larger one is used for C: and the other for the ExpressCache???
Also notice that disk1 is empty. Pretty much all of them are, with the exception of 2 (C: and the partition right of it)
What is it used for?? How can i find out?? Whoever installed this system made a mess.
Here is a second part of my question:
For work reasons I have to have a Ubuntu machine and I thought I could just dualboot and use the partitions that are unused. Which is why i care about the unused space.
I have used virtualbox in the past but it was really slow. I need a responsive system and virtualization is no longer an option.
So my question would be how can i accomplish the dualbooting?? Specially taken that i have UEFI/random partitions in my system.
I know there are a lot of tutorials out there but none come close to my drive mapping/situation.
Just don't wanna destroy my system while trying to get the dualboot working.
About 1-2 weeks ago, I had 15GB of space left on my SSD that is solely committed to OS and drivers. Today, I have 2.9GB left. I have downloaded nothing, and I have changed nothing. take a closer look at why my SSD space is disappearing? I've had this OS for 2 months now and it wasn't a problem until recently.
One of my favorite features of Windows Explorer was that it told me the free disk space in the status bar. Since Windows Vista, you also had the ability to see the free space on hard drives across the network.
Now in Windows 8 you can't even in the least see the free space on the status bar of your own pc, let alone those across the network, and for someone who's constantly moving files across my home network, it's becoming a bit of a hassle.
I don't think there's away to to restore this functionality (already installed the ClassicShell program) so absent of that, is there a free disk space monitoring tool recommended? I'm mainly looking for one that has a system tray function that can tell me the amount of free space I have left, either in percentage form, or megabyte form, or gigabyte form, whatever.
It seems that Windows 8.1 Pro's scheduled defrag is consolidating free space, which is taking forever on one of my 2 TB data drives, which has about 300 GB free space. I stopped it at about 9%, and dfrgui immediately showed it as "OK (0% fragmented)". Clicking its Optimize button resulted in the defrag phase completing almost immediately, but then it was back to consolidating free space, starting at 5% this time. According to Task Manager, it's read/writing about 40 MB/sec, and the Active Time is over 90%. I really don't want this to go on for hours and hours and potentially repeat itself during future scheduled scans. Is it possible to alter this behavior, or should I just disable the weekly defrag task?
I have just done a clean install of 8.1 on my old MacBook Pro as I broke the screen on my normal laptop. I could only afford to give 40GB to this new installation so I'm quite tight for space.
I've always used [URL] .... to check for disk usage but in my case it is not useful as it shows size of items not the size on disk. I have to keep my OneDrive files on-line only to save space but as they are reported as part of used disk space I am seeing 150% of my disk space is used which isn't useful really. In Disk Management I can see it is only 59%.
Any utility like WinDirStat that shows size on disk?
I am having trouble with a message in Action Center in Windows 8.1. It is saying "Check Backup Disk Space" and I cannot hide the message. I had Windows 7 File Recovery setup with Windows 8.1, but now after the upgrade, the message is "stuck." Can this be fixed? These two links explain it perfectly:
Windows 8.1 Update - Check backup disk space - Microsoft Community
Windows 8.1, can't remove "Check backup disk space" error in action center -
I'm about a year into windows 8, which came pre installed on a Lenovo C440, 64 bit, 1 terrabite HD partitioned into C,467 GB,E,storage 437 GB. I updated to 8.1 a few weeks ago and aside from the 'feeling' that everything is running a bit slow all else seems fine except: ever since I got 8 I've been losing space on C drive,about a GB or 2 a week somewhere I got hint to go to System, delete all restore points and then create a new restore point.
I'd do this whenever I'd be down 4/5 gigs and get all the lost space back. Since I went to 8.1 I'm losing a gig or more a day, and it doesn't come back after the delete restore process. I use CC cleaner daily and remove everything but cookies ( way too much trouble to have to log in again at every site I go to).
I don't hibernate, just sleep I auto defrag once a week I have Trend Micro do a full scan nightly I still have plenty of space but I've lost about 9 GB in 3 weeks of 8.1
I just installed Windows 8.1 on my system (from Windows 8) and had to restore to an earlier time (to one from earlier today). The issue is that my solid state hard drive was reduced by about 20 Gigs! I even deleted the other restore points and rebooted, but my hard drive has about 136 gigs of space. Before the restore, it was 156.
Does windows restore really eat up this much hard drive space? Is there a way to get it back?
I have a Lenovo Z580 running Windows 8 on a 256 GB SSD, which was cloned from the original drive using Paragon cloning software. I got the computer up and running about a month ago, and I started personalizing it by installing programs and such. At the beginning of today, I probably had around 25 GBs left of storage, which may not seem like much but it will last me until I need to be done with this computer.
Today I went to download a 5 GB zipped folder used to install MATLAB via a licensed, legit website (student license). I check after it downloads and I have roughly 20 GB left on my disk. Note that every other program I have installed has had no trouble with Windows 8 (including Mathematica), so I assumed MATLAB wouldn't either. I hit the setup button, and nothing seems to come up. I hit it again and this time it says something like "not allowed to create destination." So then I tried cutting and pasting it to the desktop, but there was some error with that too. I tried to use the setup application in other ways, and it still didn't work.
I then checked my free disk space and I had 100 MB of free space left. Uhm WHAT?! What the hell just happened?! I search through pretty much ALL my file folders to see what was newly written and see if I could find a TWENTY GIGABYTE folder that was created today. I couldn't find anything. What I think happened was that the setup application unpacked a bunch of files from the compressed folder SOMEWHERE on my disk, EACH TIME I hit setup. THEN it would hit a snag, for some reason, and stop the setup, and NOT delete the temporary files.
SO my next step was to use the "Disk Cleanup" option, to see if the theoretical temporary files could be deleted that way. It gets to the list and I discover that the "Temporary files" option is an INCREDIBLE 98.6 GB size. UHM WHAT?! How is it possible that my OS thinks it can safely delete nearly 100 GBs of data off my 256 GB hard drive?! What is it deleting exactly? Let's assume that 20 GB was in there; that still means it's deleting almost 80 GBs. I couldn't believe that. So obviously I haven't deleted that yet, because I fear that it thinks some of my programs, or maybe even the OS itself, is a bunch of temporary files. I don't even know. I do have a 30 GB recovery partition, so maybe that 30 is included in that, but EVEN THEN 50 GBs is a TON to be in temporary files.
My question: is there any way to check what will be deleted in the option "Temporary files" and why is my temporary files 38% of my entire drive? Also, what happened with the 20 GBs?
I labelled it urgent because I need to install MATLAB to use it for HW, but I can't. Well I think I can find another way to use it, however I still need this problem fixed ASAP because I need space on my computer to do stuff in general.
I installed Windows 8 Pro on a GPT partition. I have 234GB of SSD with 87% free space according to Disk Management. I am trying to create a 4GB primary partition for Intel Rapid Start but the Disk Part shows i have no space available in that drive and would not let me create the partition. Why would that be?
I am really used to using Alt-F4 to close the current application. I just bought a Toshiba C855 (windows 8, of course), and when I press Alt-F4 to close IE10 (the one I launch from the desktop, not the "app", although I'm not sure yet what the difference is), I get the "second screen" thing coming in from the right. It tells about choosing what happens to a second monitor connected to your system. I also get this screen when I press F4, so it seems like the whole F4 thing has been re-directed.
Every guide and manual I've seen so far says that Alt-F4 works to close an application, so why isn't this working that way?
Yesterday I had to download WinRAR to be able to open up some files and during the setup it only asked me once if I wanted to download a toolbar. I said no... but after I closed the setup and opened Internet Explorer, this "Internet Search" tool bar is here and I can't remove it! It's annoying because I can't click a link that opens up a new tab but instead of going to the link it goes to this "Internet Search".... I tried removing it from my Add-Ons but that didn't seem to work either.
