SOLVED Heavily bloated Windows Live folder

[Gale]

So the C: drive on my netbook is about 100GB. This should be plenty; I've had it for about a year, and I haven't used more than 20GB of it. Ordinarily, the netbook itself would give out before I actually needed to delete a single file. Except for the fact that I've ended up with less than a gigabyte of usable disk space, because the folder at C:\program files\common files\windows live has decided to allocate 80GB for itself. Even less helpful is the fact that it refuses to show me any file or folder inside it. When I view its properties, it says, plain as day, 632 files, 18 folders, 80.2 GB size. But the folder itself displays as empty, whether I'm looking at it through the browser or the command line. I'm using an account with admin privileges, as best I can tell, and it doesn't show me as lacking any permissions. I wondered if it might be a virus, but Avast can't find anything. Not to say that rules anything out, but y'know. I have checked, at least.

Any help? Worst case scenario, could I just try and delete the Windows Live folder completely, and re-install anything useful? Or is there something super important in there?

 

[bassfisher6522]

First thing I would do is un-install and then re-install windows live and see what that reveals. Then I before I re-install windows live I would change Anti-Virus software and use MSE and see what that finds. Then run any and all malware software you have just to rule out any type of infection that maybe on your system.

 

[TrainableMan]

It's quite possible the files are hidden or marked as system files. To see them you will need to adjust the folder view settings. Try the hidden option first and if that doesn't show them then try the show OS files option (but I encourage you to turn this second one back off once you are finished so you don't accidentally move/delete important OS system files)

 

[davehc]

Are you using Windows Live Mesh?

If so, after following Trainable man's instructions, go to

Users > YouUserName > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Windows Live Mesh
- and delete all the files there with the handle .tmp or .temp.
If you have a subfolder there, called "Assembler", do the same in there.

 

[Gale]

Oop, yeah, there were marked as hidden system files, that's why I couldn't see them. Thanks. I'm not using Live Mesh, so there's nothing at the location you described, but there are a whole mess of .tmp files in the folder I mentioned before. 608 of them, to be precise, at exactly 138,089 KB apiece, for a little over 80GB of mysteriously missing hard drive space. I think I've found the problem. I'm gonna go ahead and clear these out. Thanks for the help!