Problems since moving Public folder from C to D drive

[Peter Brackenridge]

I have a newish computer . It has a solid state 138GB drive with a 1 TB standard drive.
I only use the computer for the observatory and for software related to it.
For some reason it has taken up all the 138GB
I have already moved Dropbox and Documents to the D drive and was working okay

Today I dediced to move the Public folder over to the D drive.
I went through all my files and scripts to make sure I changed the pathway names.
I also changed the pathways to the Doc Root and Logs in ACP preferences.

I tested by opening the observatory running my StartUp ops script in ACP and it worked fine.
I noticed I had to reinstall Scheduler for some reason. When enabling the Scheduler after already opening the observatory, it commented it was not set up for sky flats, and that also there was no startup script.
I also tried to do a one time skyflats through the web browser but it said "missing autoflatconfig.txt file"

I am not sure what I am missing here

Peter

[Peter Brackenridge]

I reinstalled ACP and it redid the files on the C Drive under Users/Public... and now the Scheduler works again and the the Flats at dusk and dawn options come up again on the Scheduler interface, which I had notice after writing the above that I wasn't able to select them

Maybe I have to keep these files on the C drive

Have tried a few ways suggested on the web to improve disc space but still running under one GB of free space on my C drive. I just don't understand what is taking all the space as it only has my observatory programs, and the Windows folder. How could that take 136GB of space! That is more than all my dropbox files which is a lot.

I am not sure what to do as I think I am running into Windows problems in not having enough free space on the C Drive. But unsure how to relieve it any more.


Peter

[William Bristow]

Have tried a few ways suggested on the web to improve disc space but still running under one GB of free space on my C drive. I just don't understand what is taking all the space as it only has my observatory programs, and the Windows folder. How could that take 136GB of space! That is more than all my dropbox files which is a lot.

I am not sure what to do as I think I am running into Windows problems in not having enough free space on the C Drive. But unsure how to relieve it any more.


Peter

Which Windows OS and version (32/64bit) Peter?

When you look at the C drive and check the properties tab of the Windows folder what size is it reporting?

For Win 7 pro 64bit, latest updates and patches installed, running clean, it will be around 30~35Gb. For Win 10 Pro 64bit, latest updates and patches installed, running clean, it will be a little less, around 20~25Gb.

Looking at my home observatory computer this morning, Win 7 Pro 64bit, with only the observatory software installed and a set of calibration frames for the guide camera, the Windows folder is 32Gb, but I am a little behind with the latest updates, and the total installed software including Windows is 101Gb.

If your Windows folders are significantly larger than the above then the usual culprits are the Windows Temp Folder, Windows memory dump files (which can be huge if you have had one or more Windows BSOD events), Windows log files and Windows error reporting files, All of which can be emptied or deleted as appropriate.

If you are running the SkyXPro with a Paramount watch out if adding additional databases beyond the basic Bisque package, these extra databases can take up a lot of space on the C drive.

If you are unsure how to clean the Windows installation manually and you have a little free space still available then download and install the free version of CCleaner, run the 'Analyse' function first and look to see how much space can be recovered from the Windows installation, if significant then run the 'Clean' function. Don't run CCleaner's registry cleaner, CCleaner's registry clean tool is not sophisticated enough and its only answer to any registry errors is to delete the entry, best to leave the registry alone unless you know what you are doing. CCleaner's basic disk cleaning tool rarely causes any issues but as usual, it's always wise to have an external hard drive backup or clone available in case something goes wrong and you can quickly restore your system.

https://www.ccleaner.com

When you have finished with CCleaner you can remove it via Windows Programs and Features to free up a bit more space again.

I think a 138GB SSD for the C drive is a little on the small side given how much of the current astronomy software available does not give you the option of installing anywhere else than on the C partition, I wouldn't want to run on anything less than 250Gb myself but I know it is possible with careful managing to run on smaller drives.

A couple of points to check in your Windows setup, for a SSD Windows should recognise it and disable 'Prefetch' (resp' 'Superfetch') and enable 'Trim' but Windows does not always correctly identify that an SSD is present. It makes no difference to the capacity of the drive but having 'Prefetch' or 'Superfetch' enabled and 'Trim' disabled with a SSD can cause Windows bottlenecks. You can find out how to check and set 'Prefetch' (resp' 'Superfetch') and 'Trim' with a Google search, it's not difficult.

While not directly related to your question we have had problems on our four remaining Windows systems at our remote site, running very slowly, taking longer than fifteen minutes to plate solve, three or four minutes to download an image from the camera, auto guiding failing etc, etc, long story short...Google Chrome sneaked in a new software spy a couple of months ago, some kind of software reporting tool, it scans your hard drive looking at every program, DLL, folder. file and reporting back to Google what's on your computer, was eating up all our CPU resources and our satellite internet bandwidth. Chromes software reporting tool runs even if Chrome is not open and we had a bit of a job finding it as it seems to run at any time, in addition it appears to run an instance for each user account on the computer. We have four users, admin and the default windows guest account on each of our mounts and Chrome was launching as many as six instances of its software spy simultaneously, which was throttling access to the C drive and bringing everything else to halt.

We uninstalled Chrome and now everything is back to normal, not sure why the techs installed Chrome in the first place, was not really necessary for unattended operations.


William.

[Peter Brackenridge]

Hi William

Thank you for your detailed reply.

I was wrong, the drive is only 118GB. I am running Windows 10 64 bit and it is up to date. It is a new computer. It came with that size drive and then a D drive at 1TB. I thought that would be enough for the software on the C drive and the Windows, but maybe I have miscalculated.

The Sky X databases, which I have, I hadn't yet put them onto this computer as I have been using ACP mainly at the moment.
I did look at the Temp files and log files. I had clicked on properties on the C drive and it says Used space 117GB, available space 984MB.
When I click on the Windows folder, then Properties it says it is using around 2.4 GB. When I click on the Programn folder, then Properties its says 1.34GB
On Program(x86) it says 4.46GB
Users folder it says 1GB
So is Windows taking up a lot more space than it says it is , even after cleaning up.

I am not sure I have room for CCleaner but can try and see if it makes it any better. Otherwise I may have to get a bigger SSD drive I think

I don't have Chrome. Sounds an horrendous thing to have infect your computer !

Thanks William

Peter

[Peter Brackenridge]

Actually the windows folder is 18.5GB. I hadn’t waited for it to complete it working it out
still I shouldn’t have more than 40Gb on there but saying it’s full

[Peter Brackenridge]

It almost seems like the C Drive is combining its contents with the D drive when it estimates its size. Unsure how that would be but there is about 80or so GB extra on the C drive that doesn’t exist

[William Bristow]

The reported size of your program folder doesn’t look right either, ACP, TheSkyX Pro, Maxim, ASCOM, FocusMax etc alone would be close to 10Gb, perhaps you didn’t wait long enough for the contents to be read when in the properties tab on that folder too?

If your PC came with Windows and the usual bundled dross preinstalled then there may be a hidden recovery partition on the C drive which takes some space though normally it is compressed and quite small, ~4-5Gb.

It might be that Windows has reserved some space for a swap folder and not released it or the C drive has a problem.

Try typing ‘disk cleanup’ (without quotes) in the search box on the task bar, run the built-in Windows 10 disk cleanup tool and see if that reports anything that is taking a lot of space that can be removed.
In particular, look at the 'More Options' tab in Disk Cleanup and check out the option under System Restore and Shadow Copies, you may be able to recover some space by deleting older backup and restore points, just leaving the most recent.

William.

[Peter Brackenridge]

William, I attached a summary of what is taking space on my drive and it looks like most of it is taken up by Windows "System and Reserved" and there isn't much I can do about that. Have tried cleaning it up as much as possible. Am just surprised it is using so much space. I didn't think my previous computer was using that much but maybe it was and it looks like my only option would be to get a larger drive put in, which is a bit of a pain. The drive is somehow running with only 900MB of free space and surely can't continue like that for long.

Peter

[Peter Brackenridge]

I also just checked the computer by clicking on System and Reserved and there is no GB allocate to Reserve. The ShippedforReserve DWORD in RegEdit is not selected. So the System on its own is using 107GB which sounds amazing to me.

[Dick Berg]

HI Peter,

I'm pointing you to a very useful utility I have been using for YEARS, called WinDirStat. https://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/

This produces a very nice display of space used by various system and program elements. The file structure display in the top section will allow you to peek into every corner of every folder, including hidden folders. You may more easily be able to discover what the System and Reserve space is actually consisting of.

This utility has worked for me for all versions of Windows 95 and forward. I believe this is only an .exe, and does not require installing.