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Missing 39 gigs from 80 gig hard drive
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 1:38PM
Hello, Advisors! I am trying to locate a missing 39 gig on an 80 gig hard drive. • Sony Vaoi Laptop, 80 gig hard drive, Vista Premium • Running Office 2007 Home and Student version, IE, Firefox and Chrome browsers, Itunes with 2 gigs of songs • Norton 360, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Ccleaner. Norton 360 reported that there was not enough room on the disk for updates – on checking found less than 1 gig left unused. Ran Ccleaner to clear temporary files etc and uninstalled a few incidental programs (like my phone software) to bring my unused space to 2.4 gigs. Installed “Tree size” to see what was actually filling up the hard drive – it reported that 39 gigs was being used by Norton Program Data. I “viewed hidden folders”, but Norton Program Data held only a few hundred megs! Ran Malwarebytes program with a “quick scan”– it did mention the “fauxvirus\carney-ride.exe” virus in its search but it found nothing suspicious. Re-ran the program in Safe Mode as an Administrator – still nothing suspicious. Downloaded and ran the Norton Power Eraser – found nothing. The machine, while slow, is showing no other symptoms. The question is “Where is the 39 gigs allegedly being used by Norton Program Data, and how do I recover it? Thank you for reading this.
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 2:11PM
If 'twas me, I'd uninstall Norton using their own tool, then install a fresh copy.
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 2:27PM
That is certainly an option, but the 39 gigs are not showing in the NortonProgram Data on my machine. Thanks for your interest.
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 2:30PM
'it reported that 39 gigs was being used by Norton Program Data
May be hidden - you never know with Norton!
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 2:48PM
You're perfectly right to be suspicious of Norton, and I will uninstall it tonight if there are no other forthcoming suggestions. Once again, thanks for your interest :-)
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 3:12PM
copy the norton power data folder to another location
delete the original folder
copy the folder back to its original place
see if that makes a difference.
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 3:19PM
Excellent suggestion, Fruit Bat ^0^. I'm away from that machine atr the moment, but will see if it works tonight. Thank you.
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 4:53PM
" I am trying to locate a missing 39 gig on an 80 gig hard drive. • Sony Vaoi Laptop"
This is probably a bit of a long-shot but worth mentioning anyway. All the older Vaios I've seen have their hard drive partitioned in two. You can check by clicking Start then Computer and seeing how many drives are listed in the "Hard Disk Drives" section. That just may explain where your missing 39GB is.
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Posted November 22, 2012 at 5:08PM
Thanks, Secret-Squirrel. That was one of the first things I checked. It is a non-partitioned C: drive - just the one! Thank you very much for your input :-)
Likes # 1
Posted November 22, 2012 at 11:25PM
Problem solved! Following the advice given, I copies over the Norton Program Data Folder (apparent size 300 megs) to an external hard drive. The transfer took almost two hours, so I knew something was afoot. It spent most of its time transferring "199 files size 0, 0 seconds remaining". When the transfer was finished the external drive had an extra 42 gigs on it! So I deleted the Program Data folder, and recovered the missing 39 gigs. I downloaded the Norton Uninstaller and uninstalled Norton 360 completely, and then reinstalled it. The program takes up about 3 gigs - fine, but I'll be keeping a close eye from now on its capacity to eat up the hard disc! Many thanks to all who read this, and especially to those who were kind enough to send suggestions.
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