A massive file keeps appearing on my hardrive that takes up all my memory?

Question

It is not showing up as a virus or anything nasty, but every time I delete this file it shows up a few days later. It is a text file and is just filled with nonsense. It takes up about 15-20Gb of hardrive and crashes my computer. I have wireless broadband, but have been turning this off when the computer is not in use.

I am pretty rubbish with computers so would appreciate any advice on what this file is, where it is coming from and how to stop it.

cheers

Sorry people - I am at work at the moment so can't access the filename. I will post this info as soon as I get home.

The file is a notepad file called RTACDBG if that helps any.

Answer 1

RTacDbg.txt file (contain wireless activity log) has to do with Wireless Network driver you have on your computer. There is bug in the driver that causes that big log file to be generated.

You can continue to use the same wireless network driver you have installed. Delete the RTacDbg.txt file, reboot, when the RTacDbg.txt is small size (33k size), right click, properties, attribute: readonly (tick it). Now nothing can be written to file and it will not grow in size.

OR

Simply update if Netgear have resolve this issue with their wireless card driver or otherwise use the to earlier version of their driver. Delete the RTacDbg.txt file.

Hope the answer was helpful.

Answer 2

As the folks above have said, a file name would have been most helpful.It really slows us down when we have to second guess. If you have a limited amount of memory (256 meg or 384 meg) Windows is probably creating a swap file to handle memory intensive tasks. As such, this file is not taking away your (computer's) memory, it's trying to assist it. So, when answering your question, 3 vital things are needed:
1. What is the name of the file
2. How much memory does your computer have
3. The operating system.

Answer 3

Sounds like your page-file. What folder is it in?
Page file is an extra bit of hard drive your computer uses to extended it's RAM memory (when the ram gets full, or isn't using something for a while), it puts it in the page file on the hard drive. Perfectly normal. Can be turned off, but wouldn't recommend it at all - but maybe reduce it -
Goto
-->Start
-->Control Panel
--> open 'system' icon
click advanced tab
under performace, click 'settings' button
Click advanced tab
Under 'virtual memory' click 'Change' button.
Here, you can set a min, max setting, turn it off, or let the system decide. If it's got a custom amount (which it sounds like), I would change it to let the system decide. It will assign an amount depending on the size of yuur HDD

Answer 4

I had a text file that done that not so long ago.Every time i deleted it it duplicated & became bigger.What i did was disconnect from the internet blocked all programs on my firewall,used Ashampoo winoptimizer3 platinum,it has a program where u can split files.I split the file into 100mb each,renamed them,then deleted them with the delete program with winoptimizer,it never came back.Also try this first.
http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-72017-RtacDbg.html

Answer 5

Post the filename

Answer 6

What is the file called? Chances are, you are running a program that is logging it's actions (not for spying purposes), or creating this file for other reasons.

Answer 7

someone doesnt like you.. They want to retaliate or are just basically purely malicious. What to do? Ifyou can get the identification number from the e mail message data, you can block it from happening again. But then they can just send it from another address.
Evil takes many forms.

Answer 8

disconnect your internet and delete then restart your pc and see if it comes back then if not when the computer is restarting press f8 and go into safemode and delete then

Answer 9

The filename would help!