ETW/Steam - Loosing Disc Memory

[JollySam]

Hello everyone,

I have a problem, and I'd be glad of any help you can give me. My laptop seems to be loosing memory at a huge rate. Everytime I take a look, the C drive seems to have lost another GB of memory. I'm pretty sure its a Steam/ETW issue, since it only started around the time I installed them.

I'm not downloading anything that warrents such a big drop of hard disc space, and I don't have much else installed apart from The Sims 2. In any case, I can't explain how I'm still loosing memory several weeks afterwards.

Can anyone explain to me whats going on - and how to stop it? I have 297 GB of memory on my laptop, and a third of it is gone already.

Thanks alot,
JollySam

[irishron]

Ever heard of a swap file, or temp file? The game will make one for its needs and if you don't have enough ram, it will grow more.

[PoleCat]

Ever heard of a swap file, or temp file? The game will make one for its needs and if you don't have enough ram, it will grow more.

Yes, but swap files and temp files are not permanent - if all works correctly then those files will have their first bit deleted allowing for overwrite. He shouldn't be loosing large chucks of hard drive space to swap files.

Something else is going on here....

@JollySam - just how much hard drive space have you lost to this? BTW - Memory and Hard Drive space are two different animals. Memory is RAM (and temporary) and Hard Disc space is what is stored on, well, your Hard Disc (and permanent until overwritten).

My question is this - do you notice a significant drop in hard drive space whenever you load E:TW?

[JollySam]

Yes, but swap files and temp files are not permanent - if all works correctly then those files will have their first bit deleted allowing for overwrite. He shouldn't be loosing large chucks of hard drive space to swap files.

Something else is going on here....

@JollySam - just how much hard drive space have you lost to this? BTW - Memory and Hard Drive space are two different animals. Memory is RAM (and temporary) and Hard Disc space is what is stored on, well, your Hard Disc (and permanent until overwritten).

My question is this - do you notice a significant drop in hard drive space whenever you load E:TW?

Hello,

Sorry for the long wait. Yes, I meant Hard Disc Space on the C drive, not RAM. I can't be sure, but I would say I have lost about 50-100GB-ish, but some of that could be Windows updates, etc.

Yes, I have suspition that running ETW and/or Steam might have something to do with it. In any case, this has happened twice on the same computer on different reboots.

Thanks alot,
JollySam

[irishron]

How good swap files get cleaned up after the program closes depends on the programmer. Some are pretty sloppy.

[PoleCat]

True enough. I'd just think that it would be a more widely reported problem if E:TW was to blame.

[irishron]

Even though he has not posted his dxdiag, I would almost bet on minimum amount of ram or less.

[PoleCat]

Good bet.

[irishron]

Even in Win 7, Windows Updates does not dump that much.

Have you downloaded anything that maybe carrying a worm or a trojan? When was the last time you ran a full disc and memory scan for viruses, adware, and malware?