Help - Out of storage but there's hardly anything on my computer

Nobody wants to believe this when I say it, but it's quite possible that your computer has been successfully taken over by a third party who is using your computer to do work on their behalf.

The nature of attacks on consumer computers has evolved over the years. Today, the professionals who do these things for a living are not really interested in anything you have on your computer (unless you make it easy for them.) They're much more interested in joining hundreds and even thousands of computers together in what's called a botnet, to use by themselves or to rent to others to crack passwords, perform encryption and decryption, forward torrents and launch attacks on other computers. One of the telltale signs of such activity is that for no apparent reason, a hard drive fills with seemingly meaningless files that may be visible or hidden.

Typical antivirus software is not going to notice this, because your computer is not being attacked. No harm is being done to your computer and the nature of the work your computer is doing are activities that computers commonly do.

I'm not saying that for sure your computer has been compromised, but what you're seeing is what typically happens when a computer has been successfully attacked in this way, so it's something you should at least consider.

One rough test you can run is to take your computer off the internet and off your local network - unplug it from everything. If the activity stops, that's probably because the attacker can no longer reach your computer to send it instructions or collect data.

I took my computer off my network and everything is unplugged. I shut down and turned it back on and its still full of storage.

Ok, I'll try that and see. I'll restart it and see if storage is taken up. and if not, I guess I'll just have to do a hard reset. How do I get the attacks to stop then, since this is the second time this has happened and i've only had the computer for like four months??

Hi Chelsea. I'm Greg, awarded MVP for eleven years, Volunteer Moderator, and Independent Advisor here to help you until this is resolved.

Find what may be taking up the space by using Tree Size, which is explained in this tutorial: https://www.groovypost.com/howto/map-hardrive-u...

Run a full Disk Check: https://www.groovypost.com/howto/check-hard-dri... to see if this is an issue with the file system.

If the disk space is not actually being used but just reported wrong, then what may ultimately be the only thing to help is to wipe the hard drive clean and do a gold standard Clean Install.

This may seem like overkill but consider that no tech enthusiast would even run a Factory Install of WIndows in the first place because they'd expect endless problems. What we have found is that in Windows 10 what matters most is the quality of the underlying install and it is very unforgiving without a great install.

For example there have been zero return problems by those who follow the gold standard Clean Install here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki.... It is a better install than any amount of money could buy and a great learning experience that will make you permanently the master of your PC because you will know what works best and have applied it with your own hands. So when you get time I'd study over that to see if it's something I can help you do.

Let me know what you find. I'll be here to help until it's resolved.

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Linked tutorial is from a trusted Microsoft MVP

How do I get the attacks to stop ...

If you can figure that one out, companies will throw barrels of money at you.  Shipping containers of money.

The people who create these botnets are professionals. They're brilliant. This is a highly profitable business. Makes me wonder why I bother trying to earn an honest living.

Most people who are successfully attacked were tricked into letting the attacker into their computer. Cybersecurity is my profession, and we know that, statistically, 90% of the attacks are pulled off by phishing and other social engineering attacks. The only way to avoid it is to educate yourself as best you can about the threats that are out there, and then to be very suspicious whenever you are on the internet.