Tag Archives: Lenovo

Full SSD on Windows 7 Lenovo Computer With Very Few Files

Problem: Recently, I had the privilege to work on a computer, that according to the customer was always running out of space. That surprised me because the computer had a Samsung 750GB EVO SSD. The computer was a Lenovo ThinkCentre A70z running Windows 7. We had upgraded the computer from a traditional hard drive to a SSD a year ago and I was sure they had plenty of space. I decided to dig into the issue and find out what the problem was.

I noticed right away using Windows Explorer that drive C had around 75GB of free space. I browsed to C:\Users\<username>. I right-clicked on their user folder and selected the general tab. Underneath the general tab I saw their user account was using only 80GB-90GB of space. I thought this was odd.

I then downloaded my trusty WinDirStat utility. I ran the tool and left it scan the folders on the computer. What I saw was quite puzzling. WinDirStat said there was only 180GB of the SSD used. However, when I went under “Computer” using Windows Explorer I showed approximately 600GB of space being used.

I decided to do a Disk cleanup on the SSD. The disk cleanup utility found 5.5GB of unnecessary files. I cleaned the computer but that didn’t account for the extra 400GB of files lurking somewhere on the SSD.

Thinking there may have been something weird with the Samsung SSD, I downloaded and installed the Samsung Magician Software. I ran the program and everything indicated that the SSD was in excellent condition.

Solution: I decided to try one more disk analyzer tool for Windows 7. I downloaded SpaceSniffer. Not having real high hopes, I ran the program and I instantly saw two huge files lurking on the hard drive. I noticed they were stored under a C:\RRbackups\SZ\<folder>. I tried to browse to the RRbackups folder but I got an “access denied” message. I entered the whole file path location in Windows Explorer and I was able to find the backup folders. There were a couple folders.
Continue reading

Rundll32.exe Using High CPU on Windows 8.1

I use a Lenovo T440s laptop for my service calls and when I need to do work remotely. My laptop runs Windows 8.1 Professional. I love this laptop and it has proved to be tough as well as extremely fast. I noticed a couple weeks ago that my battery was going dead after about an hour of usage. I also noticed that my cooling fan in the laptop was running louder than normal. I decided to open Task Manger on my laptop to see what the issue was. I soon noticed that a process called rundll32.exe was using around 25 percent of my CPU. I killed the process and everything returned to normal.

Task Manager Windows 8.1 Rundll32.exe

A few days later, my battery was going dead very rapidly. My cooling fan was on almost constantly and was blowing warm air. I opened Task Manger and sure enough, rundll32.exe was using 25% of my CPU again. I killed the process and everything was fine. It wasn’t long and my laptop was doing the exact same thing as I described before. I decided it was time to get to the bottom of this issue. Here is how I troubleshot what program was using the rundll32.exe and in the process was killing my battery.

Step One: I downloaded Process Explorer. This is an excellent tool. It is similar to Task Manager but goes into way more depth on the processes and dlls that are running. I extracted the download and then ran Process Explorer as an administrator.

Step Two: One of the first things I noticed was rundll32.exe was using 23 percent of my CPU again. Continue reading