Full Windows Defender Offline Scan - Valuable or a Waste of Time ?

Hi Gary,

30 years in KC, with temporary assignments in Endicott and Kingston.

Customer Engineer thru Technical Specialist on most of IBM's medium size

computers. Doesn't sound nearly as exciting as your career!

I am surprised. It looks like you found a task that must run on everyone's

computer. Mine shows 04/21/2018 4:12:38   I did not know that.

I didn't mean to send you down the Microsoft/Windows list, however.

Instead of expanding "Task Scheduler Library", I meant for you to click

on it. That would have displayed a list of the tasks, implemented by others,

not Microsoft. No matter, you can look again only if you desire. I think it

does show, however, that Microsoft still thinks System Restore is worth-

while.

I'm sorry, but I don't think I can offer anything regarding your "contacts

list" dilemma. It looks like it resides in Outlook 2013, and I have no access

to that.

Good Luck,  Glen

Gary,

Just as with the relatively risky System Restore, you're making things too difficult for yourself, since there's a better choice you can make to produce a contacts backup which is far easier to verify and just as easy to recover if it's ever actually needed.

The following Office article discusses how to perform an export by creating a CSV file, which can either be opened in Excel to display in a spreadsheet format or opened in a simple text editor like Notepad to view as text.

Export contacts from Outlook - Office Support

Just scroll down and note that the instructions for steps 3 and 4 are to Choose Export to a file and then to Choose Comma Separated Values.

Using the PST file option is just storing these items in a packed file database format that's native to Outlook, so it's really no more secure than any other format, it's just typically smaller and easier for Outlook to access it directly.  Since your entire purpose here is to make a backup, there's no value in using the PST format and as you've noticed, this just makes it more difficult to verify that the file is a good copy.

As for the System Restore, it's likely you'll never need to use the files this creates, though there's no risk [in creating the restore points] and only a small cost in disk space even if it were 50 GB, what else are you using this space for?

You are getting far too concerned about the use of disk space by the operating system, since with your relatively tiny use of storage for other purposes, there's no harm done if the operating system were to grow and shrink by dozens of GB per day.  The only problem is when the growth doesn't actually stop, which is why you got so concerned about the increasing use of space by the System protection settings which is configured to set the ceiling on this storage.  Eventually this would have reached whatever it's original maximum was set to and operated exactly as it is now.

The symptom of the problem here isn't with the computer, it's the more common one we see all the time here with the people using them.  It's a simple case of obsessive compulsive monitoring of the computer's daily functions, all of which are automated to avoid your need to do this yourself.

The hardest thing for technically oriented or otherwise control freak types like ourselves to do is to simply leave a well operating system alone to take care of itself.  Note that it took me several years to stop doing excessive full scanning for malware and other similar manual maintenance tasks, even after all of these had finally been well automated by Microsoft and I knew this better than most others.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do things like verify that your backup is truly working, since that's something that few people do and it's the only way to be certain you could actually recover from a catastrophic loss.  It's just that learning what your PC is already doing for you is valuable, since otherwise you've simply become a slave to the maintenance of the machine and aren't truly gaining the value it provides in taking care of such mundane tasks for you.

BTW, virtually all of the "techies" answering questions on these types of sites have a level of OCD, they just don't always recognize it or in many cases even try to learn whether it's useful or not.

Rob

Hi Gary,

Glad to hear it!

Of course, the increase in free space is from your Disk Cleanup.

Not sure about why you didn't see the normal loss. There must not have been

a request for a restore point. It should act as it has, until the Sys Vol capacity

is filled to the new reduced limit.

Take a look at your System Restore capacity, by searching on Restore >

clicking on "Create a restore point > ensure that C: is selected > and

click on "configure".    Until the "Current Usage" equals the "Max Usage",

any Restore Point creation should detract from your free space.

Please let me know what your "Current" and "Max" usage values are.

Thanks,  Glen

Hi Gary,

In response to your questions:

1. There is no need to set up System Restore protection on your backup HD.
2. Current Usage 31.46 GB is the volume of your SYS VOL folder. It was 27.4 GB

   on 04/11 according to the Tree Size program. (4.06 GB increase in 10 days)

   "Tree Size" showed a restore point to be 1.0 GB on 4/10, and .6 GB on 4/11.

   I suppose Microsoft Update may have caused this difference. If you were to

   run your Tree Size program again, say for a period of 4 or 5 days, and

   observe the changes in value of SYS VOL each day, you could gain more

   insight as to when and by how much it changes. Restore Points change it.

3. The 46.53 GB below the arrow is the maximum space set for SYS VOL.

   It will overlay itself when that value is reached. (By Design).    This is

   room for more restore points than you will ever need. You can drag

   the arrow left to 1% or 2% and still have room for several Restore Points.

   Click "Apply" then "OK" to set the change.

   I would use Disk Cleanup, as I described earlier, first. To give Windows

   the opportunity to cleanup before you decrease the size of SYS VOL.

4. It already appears that Restore Points are being set frequently. To

   determine if that is caused by a Scheduled Task, you can observe the

   Task Scheduler Library as follows:

  Search on "schedule" > click "Scheduled Tasks" > click "Task Scheduler

  Library" and scroll through tasks displayed for any indication of Restore

  Point, or maybe Western Digital. If needed you can click on a line and

  it will be spelled out better in the lower panel. If you see either of these,

  determine if you think you want keep it. If your Western Digital program

  runs automatically, there will probably be one for that. If there is one just

  for creating a Restore Point, determine its schedule, and who set it.

  You might want to consider disabling this one. You will have to decide.    

  To do so, right click its entry in the top panel, and then click "disable".

  If you decide later that you need it, you can come back and "enable" it.

5. If the Restore Points are occurring for some reason, other than Updates

    or Scheduled Task, I suppose it may be something in the way that you are

    using your computer. (15 million files seems  a little unusual to me).

    Or maybe something internal in your machine. I would not know.

One thing that you might do is observe your machine's Reliability Monitor.

You can do so by searching on "Reliability" and clicking "View Reliability

History".  This brings up your Reliability Monitor. It displays various failures

and warnings that might have occurred. If it shows a lot of activity, that

could be a cause for concern.  Clicking on any "Critical" error will give a

description in the lower panel.  It can be scrolled by clicking on the arrow

at the end of the panel. And the view can be changed to day or week by

selection at the top/left end of the graph. Don't get too caught up in this

exercise. Unless the display of a failure mentions RESTORE POINT.

Regards,  Glen

Yes Gary, if those monthly updates always correlate with the large increases in disk space for those particular filing system locations, that's completely normal and to be expected.

Typically these monthly updates will at least partially replace those from the previous month, resulting in a removal or replacement of first the downloaded update packages, followed by the overwriting of the installed versions when the actual update installation process runs.  This may happen shortly after download or possibly overnight depending upon how the update system is configured on your system.

The question of whether these files will get larger over time depends upon many factors, but in general it's likely that they will, since Microsoft is constantly adding fixes or features.  However, since the evolution of Windows 10 is specifically designed to remove certain older legacy components including highly vulnerable portions of code, it's also possible that during some updates the size of certain files might get smaller as well.

So there's no simple rule I can provide which will always hold true, but you can see that the symptoms of both temporary increases and decreases in disk space over a few days isn't anything uncommon to be worried about.

Regarding Glen's mention of the SysVol content, I wouldn't be concerned about this either.  Though He's correct that the quantity of disk space being used by this is relatively large, there's really nothing to be concerned about since as you mentioned earlier your system drive still contains roughly 400 GB free space.  The size of the SysVol storage is based on a percentage of total drive space available, so this should stay within a maximum range as the oldest of these will be automatically removed as new restore points are created.  It's also not surprising that the size of SysVol storage is increasing, since the items this is used to "backup" include those modified by the Windows Updates as well as certain other application files which are being updated automatically.

Worrying about these filing system operations is typically pointless, since unless the total size of the disk is relatively small (<100 GB) the occasional variance of a few GB of space is well within the abilities of Windows to manage.  In the past, the point at which this might start to affect system performance was roughly 15% of total disk space as I recall, though I'm not certain this specific number is still accurate with the current filing system design.

In fact, when a major Windows Update occurs which typically happens around twice a year, I'd expect there to be a temporary surge in disk usage around 4 GB or more, with an additional increase on the day the actual installation occurs.  This will eventually be reduced after some period when the update packages are first deleted and finally when the pre-installation backup of the Windows folder itself is automatically deleted as well.

If you want to see some of the remnants these processes leave, you can find them by running the Windows Disk Cleanup process and then selecting the Clean up system files button near the bottom of this dialog.  This will detail some of the Windows Update specific, as well as other less often deleted portions of the temporary files these processes create.

I personally recommend leaving these files alone, since automatic processes in Windows will eventually delete these and though some may seem large, their value as a potential way to recover various information or in case of an update failure or later discovery of a problem is worth the space they consume relative to the total capacity of the drive.  I'd only consider removing these manually if for some reason the free drive space was truly getting too small and no other option such as removing various older data files to offline archival storage was available.

In most cases, the concern for "cleaning" such files from a system is a symptom of the obsession that many of us in the technical field have towards such activity, which says more about our own foibles than the technical operating requirements of the modern computing systems we're using.

Rob