Bear with me as this is something I have never experienced being around computers for about 17 years. I am not a professional just a casual user who has learned a thing or two along the way.
I have a 2TB HDD (1.79TB). Last night or so I just happened to be in Windows Explorer and I noticed the amount of space it said I used and immediately I knew something had to be wrong....it was claiming I was using more than 800GB of space when in reality I am not even using 200GBwith anything I have installed or downloaded with the computer. With some basic research into the drive I noticed it said my users folder....then MY name in particular...was using 780GB of space. Now a little more info before I proceed on that...
About a week ago and more I started having trouble with Tuneup Utilities 2014 as it would crash when I tried to update it and then I could no longer even open the program. There would be times when I would come back to my PC after a long period of time several hours or so....and there would LITERALLY be HUNDREDS of boxes open on my screen saying error with tuneup utilities. I still thought nothing of it again and simply planned to uninstall it and mess with it later. Now...while I am trying to figure out why my PC Is showing me as using so much space when I am not I obviously think there is some hidden folders so I right click and highlight the hidden box...this option once applied actually seemed to do the opposite of what it used to do for me years back whenever I would be using it for whatever reason...instead of showing hidden files it actually hid ALL OF MY FILES and made it look like I never used the PC before. I freaked out for a second and simply clicked the box to undo it which scared the heck out of me. But while it was unhiding and hiding the files I noticed it blazing through file names so quickly that you can't read any of them. Yet both times I noticed it seemed to be just BLAZING through Tuneup Utility files that looked awfully familiar to the error I had been getting so many times. Immediately I make a connection.
So finally when I go into the Appdata folder. To my untrained eye...it appears this folder exists to somehow log anytime a program messes up? I clicked a folder called "roaming" which I also have a question for....why is there a roaming folder? I am using a desktop and it never moves....either way in this roaming folder was a tuneup utility folder with 800gb of crash files!!!! For WEEKS...every minute my PC was running...tuneup utilities would make 3 files...1 file 1KB... 1 file 111KB...1 file 96MB. YES, 3 files per minute...EVERY MINUTE the pc is running.
TL DR. Is there a reason to to believe I have a virus? Why is there a roaming folder for SOME programs inside of appdata yet other programs folders are shown in two other folders called Local and Local Low?
What is the purpose of the appdata folder and whats the benefit of using it? Assuming I could turn it off that is.
Can I safely delete the files in there taking up ridiculous amounts of space and more importantly somehow change it so it would no longer make a save and document every time i crashed? Back before I uninstalled tuneup...I was getting sometimes 5 error messages in 10 seconds....turns out every SINGLE time it did that it created some kind of log about it and a HUGE One at that. How do you turn that off? There has to be a way to turn it off as I dont see any benefit as to saving to my HD a strange file each time something crashes.
I have never had anything like this ever happen in my life...and I have dealt with some pretty weird PC issues I was able to fix going blind.
I have a 2TB HDD (1.79TB). Last night or so I just happened to be in Windows Explorer and I noticed the amount of space it said I used and immediately I knew something had to be wrong....it was claiming I was using more than 800GB of space when in reality I am not even using 200GBwith anything I have installed or downloaded with the computer. With some basic research into the drive I noticed it said my users folder....then MY name in particular...was using 780GB of space. Now a little more info before I proceed on that...
About a week ago and more I started having trouble with Tuneup Utilities 2014 as it would crash when I tried to update it and then I could no longer even open the program. There would be times when I would come back to my PC after a long period of time several hours or so....and there would LITERALLY be HUNDREDS of boxes open on my screen saying error with tuneup utilities. I still thought nothing of it again and simply planned to uninstall it and mess with it later. Now...while I am trying to figure out why my PC Is showing me as using so much space when I am not I obviously think there is some hidden folders so I right click and highlight the hidden box...this option once applied actually seemed to do the opposite of what it used to do for me years back whenever I would be using it for whatever reason...instead of showing hidden files it actually hid ALL OF MY FILES and made it look like I never used the PC before. I freaked out for a second and simply clicked the box to undo it which scared the heck out of me. But while it was unhiding and hiding the files I noticed it blazing through file names so quickly that you can't read any of them. Yet both times I noticed it seemed to be just BLAZING through Tuneup Utility files that looked awfully familiar to the error I had been getting so many times. Immediately I make a connection.
So finally when I go into the Appdata folder. To my untrained eye...it appears this folder exists to somehow log anytime a program messes up? I clicked a folder called "roaming" which I also have a question for....why is there a roaming folder? I am using a desktop and it never moves....either way in this roaming folder was a tuneup utility folder with 800gb of crash files!!!! For WEEKS...every minute my PC was running...tuneup utilities would make 3 files...1 file 1KB... 1 file 111KB...1 file 96MB. YES, 3 files per minute...EVERY MINUTE the pc is running.
TL DR. Is there a reason to to believe I have a virus? Why is there a roaming folder for SOME programs inside of appdata yet other programs folders are shown in two other folders called Local and Local Low?
What is the purpose of the appdata folder and whats the benefit of using it? Assuming I could turn it off that is.
Can I safely delete the files in there taking up ridiculous amounts of space and more importantly somehow change it so it would no longer make a save and document every time i crashed? Back before I uninstalled tuneup...I was getting sometimes 5 error messages in 10 seconds....turns out every SINGLE time it did that it created some kind of log about it and a HUGE One at that. How do you turn that off? There has to be a way to turn it off as I dont see any benefit as to saving to my HD a strange file each time something crashes.
I have never had anything like this ever happen in my life...and I have dealt with some pretty weird PC issues I was able to fix going blind.
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8.1