Crazy 114GB text File.

[trigger_tre]

Hey guys,

My sister brought her PC over today because it was completely of of memory. 160GB Hard Drive completely full. I knew she had lots of pic/movies/music but geez.

It literally was displaying 0 Free space available under system information.

I couldn't even run programs. I started moving some of her pics/movies/music onto an external hard drive. only freeing up about 30 GB.

After a little digging I came across this text file call LSBurnWatcher. The filesize of the text file is 119,935,215 kb and Notepad couldn't even open the file because it was tooooooo big.

I googled it and various stuff was referencing it as a danger.

I am just curious as to your thoughts on this. Have any of you seen a single TEXT file this big from a virus???

-trigger

[Jutlander]

I know a guy who got a virus on his computer, that just kept growing in size and when it couldn't get any bigger, it just created a new file until there was no space left on the harddrive. Don't know how he got rid of them though.

[croatiankid]

Well, I'd say it's a virus. But I'm afraid that just deleting it might not get rid of it.

[CFMaBiSmAd]

So, does this computer have any LightScribe CD/DVD drive/burning software on it that has been used at any point in time? Also, what folder/path is this file located in?

Is the size listed as 119,935,215 or 119,935,215 kb ? What is the total size of the HD?

If the size is just listed as the former, this might be a legitimate file left over from a CD/DVD creation session or it could be a file created by a dangerous program that is masquerading using filenames of a known application. You can try opening it using Wordpad, it is able to page through larger files. You can also try to find a hex/ascii dump utility program that will be able to display the file contents.

If the size is listed as the later, it is obviously due to a virus.

Download and/or buy some reputable antivirus software and use it to see what it finds. If a known virus created the text file, the executable files will probably be found by an antivirus scan.

[trigger_tre]

OK, here is some more information on it.

The path to this is:

C:\Documents and Settings\HP_Owner\Local Settings\Temp

The file size is KB and has grown since last night, in 12 hours it is now:

119,985,473 KB Text Document

Total usable size on the HD is 142 GB, this is because their is a recovery drive drive of about 8GB.

As for the LightScribe, I did a search on her computer and there are two folders:
C:\Program Files\Common Files
C:\Program Files\Sonic\Express Labeler\Backgrnd

note that "Backgrnd" is how the folder is spelled not my typo.

Of course my sister is slack in keeping her guard up against viruses. So I have loaded the following on it.

SpywareBlaster (updated and enabled)
Adaware-2007 (updated, customized and did full system scan with ADS)
Spybot (updated and did a full system scan)
AntiVir (updated, customized settings, did a complete scan)

Though I was able to clean out several HUNDRED problems, this file is still there and continues to grow every few hours.

After some research I found someone with a similar problem so they deleted it but it came back and within a few days it had reached 12 GB in size.

thanks,

-trae

[oracleguy]

A program that has a bug in it or a program mis-configuration can cause a log file to grow way out of control.

It sounds like a problem with the HP LightScribe program that is installed on her computer. Is there any sort of watcher program down in the system tray? If there is, I'd suggest ending it and see if the log file problem stops.

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

You could also try updating to the latest version of the lightscribe system software.
http://www.lightscribe.com/downloadsection/Windows/index.aspx?id=810

[ralph l mayo]

Doesn't sound malicious to me. Try deleting the file again, recreating it, and setting it read-only. Maybe that'll at least get whichever program is doing it to fess up by complaining that it can't write to its temp file. It may not solve your problem even if the file stops growing if the program continues to make a bunch of i/o requests to it, but it might be worth a shot.

[kieran]

The biggest txt file I had seen is no more than 2MB
119,935,215 kb is really toooooo big...

[GJay]

Does the windows command line have an equivalent of 'head' that will show you the top n lines of the file? (or 'tail' for the bottom, which might be more useful)

[CFMaBiSmAd]

The last time the OP was on line in this Forum was - Last Activity: 09-02-2007 12:18 PM.

That was about two full weeks ago. I am guessing that he found a solution.

[trigger_tre]

I know this post is old so moderators can close it after this post.

I just thought I would deliver my results just in case anyone else out there ran into the same problem. Simply because I couldn't find much on it via google.

I tried scanning the file as well as the parent file(s) for the lightscribe software with various anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. Results = nada.

I tried deleting the .temp file which would stop it momentarily. That is until I would do a reboot and the darn program would re-establish itself on the pc during starting. Thanks root directory. Results = unsuccessful.

I tried updating the drivers but it didn't help.

I didnt want to delete the lightscribe technology completely, simply because it wasn't my pc.

So all I did was run msconfig and cancel the program on startup.

Problem fix.

Evidently, even though I deleted the .temp file, when lightscribe would load on startup it would recognize that the .temp file was missing and simply write a new one. The .temp file itself was basically just a text file the was keeping a record of any cd played, mp3 played, burned, ripped, copied, etc. And when I say a record of my actions I believe it was copying the entire songs themselves.

I only know this because the file only grew when media files were access via media player or itunes, possibly others. And when it grew it grew by Megabytes at a time. So if I played an mp3...BAM file grew by at least the size of the mp3 plus whatever other code it was storing in the .temp file.

Maybe this info will be helpful to anyone else who encounters this problem.

-trigger