Hi all! I have a really strange question. I hope it doesn't sound stupid too... The other day I was on my comp in the AM, and I checked my HD space and all was good. Only about 1/4 space was used. Then I shut down and went to work, When I came back on later, I was surfing the net and a warning came up and in the taskbar next to the clock was the C drive icon, and the warning said that I was very low on HD space. I went in and looked at the pie chart and it was all full except for a tiny sliver. The warning told me to eliminate some old files and such to free up space, so I did. I went through everything, still it didn't free up anything. Then I went and started removing programs one by one, still it didn't budge. So, when I got my comp down to the bare essentials, I rechecked the HD and nothing. I finally was at my wits end and formatted my HD. I got all my HD space back. I only now have the bare essentials cause this weekend I am going to upgrade to XP and don't feel like loading all my stuff back in to have to format again. OK, that same day too, my AVAST AV told me that I had a virus. I can't remember the exact name, but it said it was a Win32(name was here) virus. Could this virus have gone into my HD and done all this? I just can't see any reason that this would have happened. I did NOT add any new large programs. Always had Spybot S&D, SpywareBlaster, AdAware, AVAST, ZoneAlarm & Trojan Remover. I've had them for a long time and I always had plenty of room. I haven't had any music files on my comp for over a year, and no large pictures or anything that would do this to the comp. I would really appreciate it if someone can throw an idea my way. Sorry I can't remember the full name of the virus. Thanks to anyone that replies... --Viv :)

yes there are hard drive filler viruses. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=space+filler+virus

hth, Thank you so much. I went to the google and am ready to do a lot of reading. I just found it strange how all of a sudden in the same day, my HD got completely maxed out. It scared the daylights out of me as I never had problems with HD space. Thanks again! Also, if anyone else has any other thoughts on this, I'd love to know so I can educate myself even moreso about this. Thanks to all! --Viv :)

I forgot to mention that ever since I formatted my HD, my floppy A runs(running sound), whenever I click on anything to open a program, IE, a site, etc. Could my floopy A be damaged from this virus? I went into my son's comp and removed his floopy A and hooked it up to where mine was and his did the same exact thing. So, I know it's not the actual Floopy A. I just dunno what could be causing this. Just wondering if the virus did damage there too. --Viv :)

If you reinstalled then the virus does not exist anymore and cannot damage anything. Therefore if you verified your floppy drive itself is not damaged (via trying it in another computer) then it is not damaged. It is always possible that you could have gotten another virus after reinstalling. If you use Outlook or anything similar for your e-mail, it could be executing "unsafe code" (or viruses) just by previewing an e-mail and yes viruses can unwillingly come from friends. I suggest you move to XP (clean install), then go through Windows Update and FULLY update your computer before installing anything else. Then drivers go, then antivirus, then other programs and backup. Once all that is done I would rescan and reupdate. This may be a little overboard but do as you wish. No matter what OS however I suggest you always stay fully updated with the OS and the antivirus. I'm not sure about yours however mine (F-Prot) has a schedular to update virus info and I have it do it every day. Good luck!

Re: Unusual floppy drive activity POSSIBLE VIRAL BEHAVIOUR? This is very unlikely to be a hardware problem. This type of behaviour may be caused by a boot-sector virus in the computer's memory which is attempting to write to the boot-partition of available floppy disks. Some viruses may survive on the boot-sector of a hard-disk even when a system reinstallation is carried out! The most secure method when reinstalling a system is to delete partitions and run a low-level (not quick) format of the hard-disk. Then carry-out a clean (fresh) installation. HOWEVER - if you have a current antivirus product it is generally unnecessary to format and reinstall everything - this is the point of using antivirus software! To eliminate any known viruses do the following: 1) Update antivirus software to latest virus definitions 2) Restart your computer 3) During the boot process keep pressing F8 to bring up a menu and choose to boot into safe-mode (but not command-prompt if XP) 4) Run a FULL system scan 5) If any viruses are detected carry out removal as directed by antivirus vendor 6) Repeat steps 2-5 to make sure all virus traces are gone. IT IS IMPORTANT TO BOOT INTO SAFE MODE This prevents most viruses running as Windows is loaded in 'diagnostic mode'. NOT A VIRUS PROBLEM? If you eliminate the possibility of a virus and the problem persists please post back as there could be non-virus reasons for this problem.