ProgramData/Norton 159GB text document

[I4AT]

My mum's Yoga 2 Pro has been suffering from low disk space messages for a little while now, and I've been a little lazy, but finally decided to find the problem. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary at first glance, pictures, video, my documents, etc. nothing took up more than 10GB or so.

So I showed hidden files/folders, went snooping around and finally found the culprit inside the ProgramData/Norton folder, a 159GB text document...

Just wondering if anyone has heard of an issue like this before, known bug with Norton? Or possibly the doing of malware/a virus? Online search turned up no similar reports that I could find.

It's just this one document, and it hasn't been modified since August 31st, 2015 so it seems more likely to be a Norton bug/fluke rather than malicious software of some sort, or I'd imagine it'd be constantly updating itself?

I'm gonna run Malwarebytes/Windows Defender Malicious Removal Tools etc. just to be safe, but I have a feeling it's Norton. I've never liked Norton/McAfee, but her husband prefers she use them.

Anyways, just curious if anyone has seen this issue before and can recommend a few links so I can fix it properly, and then also find out what's causing it to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks.

Screenshot of file in question.

 

[crashtech]

Is the hard drive in good shape? I would suspect data corruption ahead of a program bug.

 

[I4AT]

Seems to be, never had any file corruption issues, Windows Disk Management reports "healthy" but I haven't downloaded and run any actual diagnostic programs to check for bad sectors or anything. All of the other Norton logs are in the 4-40KB range, it's just that one random outlier taking up almost the entire HD.

Is there a built-in Win10 utility for checking S.M.A.R.T. reports and bad sectors?

Malwarebytes didn't find anything.

 

[crashtech]

Disk checking is just a first, basic step when diagnosing an anomaly like that, imo. Then delete the file and move on. I wonder how many books you could fit into a 159GB text file? Could it even be opened?

OR, you could just say that you can't fix it w/o deleting Norton, ha ha.

 

[John Connor]

Windirstat will show you what is taking up space as well. I'd ditch Norton and just use Bitdefender Free.

 

[NortonSupport]

My mum's Yoga 2 Pro has been suffering from low disk space messages for a little while now, and I've been a little lazy, but finally decided to find the problem. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary at first glance, pictures, video, my documents, etc. nothing took up more than 10GB or so.

So I showed hidden files/folders, went snooping around and finally found the culprit inside the ProgramData/Norton folder, a 159GB text document...

Just wondering if anyone has heard of an issue like this before, known bug with Norton? Or possibly the doing of malware/a virus? Online search turned up no similar reports that I could find.

It's just this one document, and it hasn't been modified since August 31st, 2015 so it seems more likely to be a Norton bug/fluke rather than malicious software of some sort, or I'd imagine it'd be constantly updating itself?

I'm gonna run Malwarebytes/Windows Defender Malicious Removal Tools etc. just to be safe, but I have a feeling it's Norton. I've never liked Norton/McAfee, but her husband prefers she use them.

Anyways, just curious if anyone has seen this issue before and can recommend a few links so I can fix it properly, and then also find out what's causing it to prevent it from happening again.

Thanks.

Screenshot of file in question.

Hi I4AT,

That's odd! That shouldn't happen. May I know the name/version of Norton program you have? Could you let me know the name of the txt file that size? May I know if you were able to check for Disk corruptions? If not, please go ahead and run a CHKDSK on the HDD and check. Let me know if it helps.

Thanks!

Dinesh
Norton Support

 

[John Connor]

Also, check out HDtune and Crystaldiskinfo.

 

[I4AT]

Sorry forgot to update. I just went ahead and deleted the file, didn't wanna try to open it to see what was inside lol.

She's running "Norton Security Suite" which may be provided by Comcast cause I see a Constant Guard Xfinity logo on the splash screen.

Version is 22.5.4.24
Current SKU 01001226
Family SKU 01100474
Media SKU 21349194

Filename in question is FSDUI-2015-08-30-18h28m33s which can also be seen in the linked screenshot.

CHKDSK found no errors.

 

[calahan]

Windirstat will show you what is taking up space as well. I'd ditch Norton and just use Bitdefender Free.

And how does Bitdefender work? and for how long does it work on your computer?

 

[John Connor]

Bitdefender Free is what I use. It's light weight and cloud based. No updating definitions. If a website has malware Bitdefender Free will pop up a warning. It has a problem with debugging, so if you use game hacks like I do it will be a problem. I don't use any anti-virus on my desktop which is more for gaming. I depend on Sandboxie, NoScript, scan all downloads with Virus Total and common sense.

If you install Bitdefender Free you have to add your E-mail, they never spam you. At least I haven't been spammed.

 

[pcgeek11]

Bitdefender Free is what I use. It's light weight and cloud based. No updating definitions. If a website has malware Bitdefender Free will pop up a warning. It has a problem with debugging, so if you use game hacks like I do it will be a problem. I don't use any anti-virus on my desktop which is more for gaming. I depend on Sandboxie, NoScript, scan all downloads with Virus Total and common sense.

If you install Bitdefender Free you have to add your E-mail, they never spam you. At least I haven't been spammed.

Agreed. Bitdefender is working for me also. No spam either.

 

[NortonSupport]

Sorry forgot to update. I just went ahead and deleted the file, didn't wanna try to open it to see what was inside lol.

She's running "Norton Security Suite" which may be provided by Comcast cause I see a Constant Guard Xfinity logo on the splash screen.

Version is 22.5.4.24
Current SKU 01001226
Family SKU 01100474
Media SKU 21349194

Filename in question is FSDUI-2015-08-30-18h28m33s which can also be seen in the linked screenshot.

CHKDSK found no errors.

Hi I4AT,

That's OK. I am happy to hear that you were able to remove the file from the PC without any issue. If you need any help with Norton, we would be more than happy to assist you with that.

Thanks!

Dinesh
Norton Support