Nothing about cracking, just a problem

[squareD]

Hi,

just defragmented my harddrive and saw that there is a problem on drive C because there is only less space left.

Drive C has an amount of 10GB...

Putting mouse pointer on icon of this drive says 9GB in use.
Marking whole content of drive C says 4,5GB!!

Looks like an error in MFT, because all seems to be twice.

Tools like chkdsk, GetDataBack, R-Studio, Spinrite and other are not able to repair something, except restoring deleted folders and files.

So what else I can do?

Formatting drive C and installing Windows new isn't my preferred solution.

Regards,
squareD

[Maximus]

with my dismay, I noted NTFS alloc its internal data structures hidden, which are a % of HD space. Depending on the content, the MFT can reach ~50% size of your HD, from a standard ~15%. There are no direct tools for shrinking MFT to a smaller size.

I haven't found a solution to it (well, I never searched it, honestly).

Also, check out how much space the content index is taking up. It might be alot....

Even if this question might be too simple, but have you emptied all your recycle bins (like the Windows recycle bin, the Executive Software recycle bin, the Norton recycle bin, ...)? I know that the Norton recycle bin hides itself from Windows so you have no way of entering it with Windows (it's stupid, but you have to use some DOS program to change to the hidden directory and work with the files). This could be one possible solution.

"Normal" hidden files are an other possible source of your problem.

The next idea I could think of is a partition tool. Have you used one lately? I once used Paragon Partition Manager and when resizing my partition, it only resized my partition. It didn't care to make any changes to the NTFS file system. So I ended up in a 30 GB partition with 64 GB of free space and lost some files until I noticed the fatal error.

How does your "all seems to be twice" look like? Do you have all folders twice when you look at the in Windows Explorer?

I believe there's a tool in Diskeeper Professional for resizing the MFT. Check it out at http://www.diskeeper.com/.

[squareD]

Windows recycle bin is empty.
No Norton programs on PC, because they made too much problems, especially the Norton recycle bin.

Since I use the SpeedCommander, really all hidden files and folders are shown.
There are also no problems.

I used PartitionMagic a half year ago, as I inserted a new harddisk and increased my drive C:, but every thing went OK.

How does your "all seems to be twice" look like? Do you have all folders twice when you look at the in Windows Explorer?

No, no certainly not!!

It's strangely as described in first post.
I worked with PerfectDisk on drive C: and had problems to defragment my pagefile.sys, because there was not enough space to do so.
But this could not be, because there are no programs installed on this drive.
Just only system and those files, that couldn't be prevented to be placed there!

So I put mouse pointer on icon of drive C: and got message only 1GB free, which means 9GB in use.
Shocked a little bit about this I opened drive C: and marked whole folders and files, used right mouse button to open context-menu and asked for the size of folders and files.
The result was only 4,5GB, thus only half of above!

I took that to the cause to check all other drives and all other computers in my house...
Putting mouse pointer on icon and asking for size in context-menu results always identical values.

Regards,
squareD

[Maximus]

er...
The other thing that I got in my mind is... none had created and reserved for himself a 'quote' within your drive without telling it to you?
@digitalas: thx, I'll check it!
(if xp is installed in such hds, launch the clean manager and in advanced tell him to delete all previous restore points but last, it will give back a Gb or so, it depends)

[squareD]

@digitalas

No tool there for repairing, decreasing or minimizing MFT...
Just defragmenting, but that can PerfectDisk also.

@Maximus

Tested drive with BitDefender, TauScan and all other tools that I own...
None of this 'hunter' found something that could branch a quote of space for himself without telling me...

Regards,
squareD

[Maximus]

*ponder*
Check with Disk Investigator directly your hard-disk (but before, clean restore points as suggested and check how much space you recovered)

@squareD:
Diskeeper is not only for defragmentation but can also change your MFT size.

[squareD]

A large stone has fallen down from my heart...

Cleaning restore points does solve the problem.
Drive C: looks like new.

Checking restore points before deleting with clean manager crashed rstrui.exe with read error at 0x00000000.
Second try out of register card of desktop icon crashed rundll.exe with read error at 0x0000001C and an unknown software exception at 0x7C953345.

I never noticed that restoring doesn't work, because I never came into the situation to need it.
May be this was the reason, that windows never deleted a restore point by itself, but collecting 4,5GB.

So there are left some questions for me:

1. Why windows doesn't add restore points data to size of drive? (When marking folders and files)
2. Where does windows store restore points data?
3. How to repair restore manager, not to get problems in future?

Taking a quick look into help file gave me no satisfying answer.
(Restoring rstrui.exe and rundll.exe doesn't solve problem as well)

Regards,
squareD

[Maximus]

happy to have helped

[xobor]

Windows stores restoration points in hidden folder "System Volume Information" (if you wish to look in it you must add rights to that folder to the admin account)

Windows hide amount of "lost" space, because it cannot rise above certain size and for M$ users are stupid so why scaring them with some system used space

size of System Volume Information is set in controlpanel->system->restore system

regards

[squareD]

Windows hide amount of "lost" space, because it cannot rise above certain size.

By default the amount should be 12% of drive space...
I never changed this value - So 12% of 10GB = 1,2GB and NOT 4,5GB!
Thus I never came on the thought, which undeleted restore points could have to do to something with the problem.

Windows stores restoration points in hidden folder "System Volume Information"

I had assumed that, but putting mouse pointer over folder always said "folder is empty". So I will add rights to admin account.

size of System Volume Information is set in controlpanel->system->restore system

That's just the point where restore system crashes and obvious the reason for problem.

Anyone an idea how to repair it?

Regards,
squareD

[hosiminh]

Via Dos delete this folder ( System Volume Information )

NTFS4DOS
hxxp://www.datapol.de/dpe/freeware


Then turn it off via registry:
hxxp://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_restore.htm

[squareD]

So this may be the final end of this thread...

Deleting folder "System Volume Information" without turning off "restore system" has solved the rest of my problem.

Thanks to all of you giving me an answer.

Nobody knows all and I did learn a lot about things that never could happen as I thought.

So my last remark:
I never understood, how BillyBoy (Micro$oft) could become richest man in the world.

Stolen another guys system called CPM, changed some bytes and renamed it to DOS.
Sold it to a real big computer company called IBM for plenty of money.
Took the money and sat in the sun to get visions.
Tinkered around year for year building a GUI system called windows, knowing that it would never really work.
Employs students of computer science after their study conclusion paying badly.
But never mind, they are proud after a cuple of years and searching for a new job, to say " I worked for Micro$oft".
And it really helps.

Regards,
squareD