c:\windows\csc\... :(

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

earlier today our i.t. guy installed vray, onyx tree pro, and winzip on my computer (the winzip installed automatically when he logged in). after that, i started working again. i started to notice an odd icon on some of my folder icon that signify a directory. the more i worked, the slower my computer ran, and i started running out of disk space. after doing some detective work i found that the weird icons were caused by offline file sharing being turned on. the i.t. guy said he didn't change anything, so i am assuming that one of the apps that were installed changed this setting, but why i don't know.

 

anyone else have this problem?

 

i worked for about 2 hours before i realized what was happening. i was running out of disk space because windows xp had mirrored 2.9 gigs worth of files to my c drive (c:\windows\csc) (csc stands for 'client side caching'). i went into file explorer, under folder options, and sure enough, offline files were enabled. i then clicked the button to delete the offline files that it had created, but it told me there were none. even though i could look in the csc directory, and see 2.9 gigs worth. i can not tell what the files are, they have names like '800000A0' with no extension, and they are relatively small in size (1k to 1meg). instinctively i would just select these, and delete them, but the little info about them on microsoft's site recommends not doing that because it might mess things up (very insightful). i am now wondering if the i.t. guy logs back in if it will recognize the offline files, and properly delete them for him. i have admin rights on my computer, so i am not sure if that will work or not. but it did start while he was logged in. although it has been adding files to the directory while i was logged in working.

 

any insight would be appreciated, it has brought my computer to its knees because it does not have enough space left to write scratch files.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

i just remembered another thing i did today that might be the cause of the problem. i changed the 'my documents' folder to point at the network drive where i store my working files at. i did this in the am hours though, and my problem started 4 minutes after the previously mentioned apps were installed. that is why i think one of those may have been the culprit.

[bigcahunak]

Ohhhh, you crazy poor homeless files...

I too work offline from a server, so hope I can be of any help...

First, what king of work and file do you work from the server? If its MAX files than unless you guys have a 1gb network than it's not a smart idea. It's only advised to work on relatively small files if working on a network (thats regardless to offline working).

What do you mean "run out of disk space"? How much did you have left?

I use cachmov.exe to move all my cached files to a different drive, rather than saying on C:\. That way my huge offline files files (altogether) are not cached on a system drive. It has other advantages (space, fragmenting, OS speed...)

Having said all that, unless you really got no space left on your C:\ drive, you shouldnt be experiencing that slow down you described.

Have you defragmented C:\ lately?

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

my c drive is only 1 gig drive. the winxp message kept popping up in the corner, telling me i was getting low on disk space. at one point i was down to 800k available on c. that is not a whole lot of space unless your talking to mr. gates in the early 80's.

 

this morning we verified that offline file sharing was turned off, then just right click deleted the 'csc' directory. hopefully it does not mess up my OS.

 

my disk could use def ragged, but it is not bad. it only slowed down after offline sharing was turned on. i was running lightwave, formz, onyx tree, listening to mp3's, all while my computer was copying a couple of gigs of info in the background. so running out of disk space created a real problem.

 

when i work off of the network, i am using formz, photoshop, lightwave, or 3dstudio. i save to the network when using 3dstudio except when i am storing a radiosity solution in my file. if i am i hopefully remembered to save to one of my local drives instead. i keep my library of textures and models stored locally, but all of the project info on the network so it gets backed up every night, and i don't have to think about it.

 

anyway, i think my problem is solved for now, i am just confused as to how and why it was turned on. i checked the other machine that those apps were installed onto yesterday, and offline sharing was enabled on that machine also.