I Can Watch My C Drive Filling Up

Hi
Myself looking at the logs I don't see anything that stands out as malicious, not even adware.
 
A few things that I did pick up on are some items that will update at boot up or when you should switch your machine to using Windows.
 
 
Bitdefender <= at least  3times a day and at boot up
Dropbox      <= at boot up
IntelPTTEKRecertification.exe <= possibly at boot up or when ever the taskj was created.
 
What I can ask you do at this time is to run a couple of free scans to see if it can find anything hidden.



Download AdwCleaner from here and save it to your desktop.

• run AdwCleaner by clicking on Scan Now
• when it has finished, leave everything that was found checked, (ticked), then click on Clean and Repair
• if it asks to reboot, allow the reboot
• on reboot, click on View Log File; please attach the content of the log to your next reply.

=======================

You may have Malwarebytes Anti-Malware installed but if not, you can download it from here:

• run the program
• click on the ‘Dashboard’ to make sure everything is up to date, (it is not necessary to upgrade to the premium version of MBAM)
• click on the ‘Scan’ tab, (directly below the Dashboard tab)
• select the Threat Scan option
• slick the Scan Now button
• Threat Scan will begin
• when the scan has completed and if malware was found, click the Quarantine Selected button to allow MBAM to quarantine what was found
• if prompted to restart the computer, close all other programs and click Yes to restart your computer
• once you are back at your desktop, open MBAM once more
• click on the ‘Reports’ tab
• double-click on the most recent Scan Report
• click on Export, then Copy to Clipboard

~~~~~
Logs to include with the next post:


AdwCleaner log
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

Hi Juliet,

Thanks for agreeing to take a look.

The number on the 'Properties' window next to 'Used space' seems to have stabilized, but it goes up or down by 10s of millions of MB in a matter of seconds. Could this be due to indexing services that are happening in the background and such? It's just that when I first noticed it, the change was drastic and it only went up. Within about 15 minutes, my total used space went from about 84.4 GB to 86.6 GB, and there was nothing being installed or any network activity to indicate any file downloads (and I wasn't downloading anything anyway. But, you know, Windows Update.)

I should note that while I was waiting for Malware Bytes to finish installing, this weird 'thought bubble' type graphic popped up directly over the Chrome button on Windows Taskbar. It was animated, and encouraged me to download MS Edge - don't know if that's some kind of adware or just a new Windows thing, but I hadn't ever seen that before.

Anyway, here are my next logs. Everything comes back clean.

Thank you again.

 

Could this be due to indexing services that are happening in the background and such?

Yes

I think this is coming from Microsoft and probably updates running in the background.

When in windows, open task manager, click on processes and just watch

you can use the scroll bar and try to track whats using the most CPU, activity….so on. Remember, you hadn't used it in a while and I think it's playing catch up.

 

I should note that while I was waiting for Malware Bytes to finish installing, this weird 'thought bubble' type graphic popped up directly over the Chrome button on Windows Taskbar. It was animated, and encouraged me to download MS Edge - don't know if that's some kind of adware or just a new Windows thing, but I hadn't ever seen that before.

I researched and found a few others complaining,

1.) What browser are you setup to use while in Windows? It's suggested as a Microsoft ad campaign.

 2.) switch to another search engine other than Bing,  turn off Bing search and turn on Google search, switching off bing as your default  search engine.

3.) Adblock Plus (a free ad blocker https://adblockplus.org)and you go to the settings on it and the "General" tab and then uncheck the "Allow acceptable ads" and that will stop them. You can use this ad blocker on most all browsers.

 4.) deleted Edge altogether

At the moment how's the computer acting?

 

Hi Juliet,

Now that I've been in Windows for a few days, I agree this must be fluctuation due to update downloads, file indexing, etc. That is so unfamiliar to me as a regular Linux user that it caused me some alarm.

I'm not too worried about the Edge ad on Chrome. It was just a surprise since it presented in the Desktop scope instead of somewhere in the browser. I'll need to keep Edge since I'm involved in web development work and I need to be able to test things in multiple browsers.

The system is running fine at the moment. Thank you so much for taking a look.

I think your going to be fine.

Use this tool to remove quarantined items and the tools I asked you to download.

Please download KpRm by Kernel-panik and save to your Desktop.

• Click on KpRm.exe to run the tool.

Vista/Windows 7/8/10 users right-click and select Run As Administrator.

• Put a check mark next to these items:

- Delete tools
- Delete now

• Click the "Run" button.

[external image: automatic.png]

• When the tool has finished, it will create and open a log report and delete itself.