Windows Log file eats up HD

[TheDragon 0]

Hey hey

I'm running WinXP 2600.

 

Just recently noticed that I've been a bit low on disk space, actually 4 days ago I noticed this. I ran a search on my hard drive for large files (>10MB) and found a few things worth deleting, but most noticibly a log file in the following path:

c:\windows\system32\logfiles\wmi\trace.log

 

It was taking up 1.3GB of memory, and growing. I couldn't delete it so I thought I might be able to restart and then delete it, as if some service was on an infinite loop and wouldn't stop writing to this file.

 

I restarted and the file was modified about 10 seconds before I could run the folder, which means its accessed and written to on startup. It then began to grow... 30Mb, 50, upward, and it will not stop until all of my disk space is gone. I'm not sure what this file is or what it's used for, but I've let my system run for days and weeks and I've never had disk space problems, which means this log file was created recently (past 4 days) or whatever is writing to it just started having an error where it writes to the file forever in the past 4 days.

 

I've opened it in word (notepad crashes, too big of a file) and in word its garbage characters throughout, and they're not the same character but different characters like the program using this file is constantly recording _something_, of which I know not of.

 

I cannot locate the service that is using this file, I've shut down all processes etc. that I can and are not critical, but I still cannot delete it because something else has it open for writing. It grows about a meg every 2-4 seconds, and its very annoying. Everytime I restart it gets reset back to 19 or so megs, I'm sure it starts at 0MB but then grows since startup.

 

Has anyone had a similar problem, or can anyone recomend a strategy or something, or a service I should shut down or disable? This thing is eating my disk space I can't leave the comp on for extended periods of time! ack.

I would appreciate any and all help.

[illegalbeagle 0]

Here are two methods that seem to work:

 

An actual way of removing it is from registry, so Start->Run... and type regedit and click OK From Regedit go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->System->CurrentControlSet->Control->WMI->GlobalLogger' and there you should find a key names "Start" double click it and you can give it a new value, put a zero instead of the 1 that is there. Now windows won't start the logger at startup. Got a bit annoying, in less than a day it ate over 5 gigs...

 

Second solution is:

 

During boot, press F8 twice to get startup options.

Select safe mode, with command prompt

log -on as administrator

At the prompt, navigate to Windows\system32\logfiles\wmi\trace.log (you still can't delete the file at this stage.) use the command "attrib +r trace.log" without the quotes (this stops windows altering this file anymore!

 

Restart windows normally

Go to the file in file-manager/explorer

Delete file

Create a new trace.log file (using notepad, and save it in the same directory where you deleted the original)

 

right click the file, and change attributes to read only

You should now have a file, sized 0 Kb, which can't be changed!

 

I hope this is helps.

 

Answers came from other users from other boards <>