I don't see any resolution to this thread, which is EXACTLY what's happening to me? Except I can lose GB in a few hours? I can't get windirstat to work properly (I can't remember now what happened, but I will try again when I've finished some other stuff). In order to install (or even uninstall) ANYTHING, I have to try to find some files to save off to flash drive, and HURRY UP to get what I want installed, or I'll lose my space.
I've done all the things: turned off hibernation, turned off/deleted system restore, decreased the pagefile to 512MB, cleared the temp int files, downloads, recycle bin (and set it to a small amount, too). I don't have a whole lot of personal files, b/c I keep them in the cloud, but I've offloaded most of them. I'm keeping some pics on there in order to have something to offload to give myself room to install something in the future--that's how bad it is!
I have another laptop that had most of the same programs installed with very few differences (this one had less). They both have 256GB SSD, but the old one has 70GB left. This new Sony came with a lot of bloatware, but I've uninstalled as much as I dare. I've gone into "clean boot" mode and while it's much slower, still watched it suck up to 0bytes free.
I'm convinced it's malware, though I try to be careful--don't open attachments, click on strange links, etc. Naturally, I run antivirus (Kaspersky), and MalwareBytes found nothing when I downloaded it several days ago. At this point, I figure I might as well reformat, since so much of my stuff has been uninstalled, but is it true some malware survives a reformat? Particularly a "quick" one, as has been recommended in my thread on this forum that isn't taxing on the SSD?
I just feel like I'm getting no where!