 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Disappearing Hard Drive Space The DOS Doctor |
One morning recently a client phoned to tell me that while everything was well with her recent repairs, she was now getting lots of strange error messages and the icons were disappearing from her desktop. She was unable to run many of her programs and the whole computer was acting very strangely.
Upon arrival I was shown a list of many error messages such as "out of memory", "cannot load..." and so on. When starting the computer I was greeted by new messages as well as a selection from the earlier list.
My client's husband had apparently experienced trouble updating Norton AntiVirus so immediately I jumped to the conclusion that she had a virus. I attempted to open NAV to check the virus list and determine the date of the virus definitions (signatures) but was greeted by the message,
"Virus list not found".
"Looks like a virus" I said as I rebooted the computer using a special two-diskette set that creates a RAM drive and loads the DOS version of F-Prot onto that RAM drive. F-Prot is a powerful virus detection program and when used in this way it has the advantage that the computer can be scanned for viruses while Windows is not running. I keep this diskette set up-to-date every ten days or so and was expecting to find a recent virus. There was to be no such find. With the diskette removed I rebooted the computer and watched all the error messages while Windows loaded.
Then when I tried to look at the Device Manager it refused to load correctly, and then suddenly all the icons disappeared from the desktop. This was trouble!
A subsequent reboot and check of the available hard drive space revealed an unbelievable situation. The computer was fitted with a 3.2 GB hard drive but it had just 600 KB free. No wonder there was such an assortment of error messages. The fact that it ran at all, with virtually no available free space, was surprising.
I looked in the C:\WINDOWS\TEMP folder to check out any temporary files and folders that might have been present. Even though I had worked on this computer within the last six weeks, and had cleaned it up at the time, it now had in excess of 100 MB of temporary files and folders.
Many programs contribute to temporary files being left in this folder on your hard drive. Some printer errors, poorly written software and if you happen to use Outlook Express as your mail program, every e-mail attachment you open direct from Outlook Express is copied to that \TEMP folder before being opened. As well as that, many software installation programs copy files from an installation CD-ROM into the \TEMP folder and the actual setup and configuration is run from that location. Unfortunately too many of those programs do not clean up after the install routine is completed and they leave behind obsolete folders with obscure names such as istmp0.dir or wzsb340.tmp or similar.
When I tried to delete a series of useless folders the computer locked up and I discovered, after yet another reboot, that it was possible to delete only a few files at a time. This is not normal but no doubt it was caused by the serious shortage of free hard drive space. Once I had more than 5 MB free I was able to delete a large block of files and folders. Finally there was 115 MB free but it should have been a lot more. Whilst this was not immediately troubling I was a little concerned that I had worked on this computer recently and apparently had failed to informed my client that her hard drive was almost full. However, the biggest surprise was yet to come.
Upon reboot all the error messages disappeared except for one referring to a particular program. I was not familiar with CYBERWARNER.EXE which it seems, was unable to load. I put this to one side whilst I showed my client how to use the excellent Live Update feature of Norton AntiVirus. This automatically downloads the latest virus definitions (signatures) via the Internet. Sometimes the procedure is a little slow but once initiated by the user it is automatic. The update took about 10 minutes and my client was happy she would be able to do it herself in the future.
The only remaining problem was the error message relating to this CYBERWARNER.EXE that was unable to load. I found the program on the hard drive and determined that it was indeed corrupted. It seemed as though it must have been supplied with the computer and appeared to be some type of fallback logging program to repair the computer in the event of critical files being deleted. I noticed a subfolder named \BACKUPS under the C:\CYBERWARNER folder and it was just as well I did because, unbelievable as it may seem, this folder contained in excess of 1.3 GB of back up files. These files were in a special format which I can only guess is used by the program to restore from loss or corruption. To my horror I noticed there had been another 20 MB of these backups created/copied in the short 60 minutes I had been working on the computer. The program was obviously out of control. Free space had now dropped back to below 95 MB. More curious now, but hot on the trail
I discovered that the 1.3 GB of data, consisting of thousands of back up files had started just eight days earlier. This was a staggering 160 MB for every day.
The computer came with a special restore CD-ROM of the type that over-writes the whole hard drive which presumably would contain CyberWarner. I decided that pursuing the restoration of CyberWarner to its correct operation was probably not worth the effort. My client agreed. As this program was not able to be removed through the control panel due to corruption I simply removed the folder and its backup subfolder. All the DLLs were also in that folder. I removed the RUN program entry from the Windows Registry. This entry had been responsible for starting the errant program on bootup. My client was happy to recover 1.5 GB of hard drive space, which would be more than enough to satisfy her needs well into the future.
A subsequent check on the Internet revealed that this CyberWarner software is supplied to OEMs,
(Original Equipment Manufacturers) such as Packard Bell and it is also available to be purchased separately. Its normal function is similar to the auto protection that protects system and other critical files in the Windows XP operating system.
Until next month, Happy Computing!
The doctor may be contacted for comments and suggestions via e-mail at dosdoctor@wordpainters.com. We do not guarantee that all correspondence will be answered.
Reprinted from the October 2001 issue of PC Update,
the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
