What the?!?!

Aaron_J · December 19th, 2001, 09:52 PM

I dual boot WindowsXp pro(5 gig partition D: ) and WindowsMe(35 gig partition C: ) Well I'm on Xp when I just got the message that my drive is almost full. I got suspicious because 99% of my programs get installed on the larger C: and I should have plenty of space left. I do some sleuthing and discover that my D:\windows directory is weighing in at 2.6 gigs!

After further examination I have found the culprit. It's a whopping 1.6 gig text file titled Trace.txt in the following folder:

D:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\WMI

It's the only thing in that folder. Anyone know what the heck this is?

I know that whatever it is there is no way it should be that size but is it safe to delete? I would love to take a look at it but I imagine my system would freak if I tried to open a file that size in wordpad.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sixpac_XP · December 19th, 2001, 10:02 PM

Well I searched the Microsoft Knowledge base and it doesn't seem to be a M$ log file....

do you have any software on your system that might produce this file?

strangerstill · December 19th, 2001, 10:06 PM

How to look at it:

more < trace.txt

Safe to delete? Well, do you really want it there? Delete it and see what happens. WMI is at http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/driver/WMI/default.asp. No idea why you have it logging you; check settings etc.

Wizzard~Of~Ozz · December 19th, 2001, 10:07 PM

go to command prompt and type

"type D:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\WMI\trace.txt |more"

That will prevent your system from hemeraging. When youve read enough press ctrl break at the same time (you'll have to forgive me if this seems a little too tutorial)

Post back if you find anything neat =]

NeoStarO1 · December 19th, 2001, 10:08 PM

I don't know alot but I am wondering if this isn't some sort of trace files like from a trogan or something to trace keystrokes or something. Or an internet log file of some sort. I am very curious to learn more on this thread. This is intersting. I can't even begin to image of what could be written in text that is that huge. Now a jpg or a Avi i can sort of imagine being that big. Does the file extenstion have any more tacked onto it like written as Trace.txt.jpg or a Trace.txt. avi to it? I have seen my computer make exentsion errors when renameing and putting the extention in myself only to have the computer think its a name of a file and not a extension.

NeoStar

Good Idea Wizard, should have thought that myself.

Sixpac_XP · December 19th, 2001, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Wizzard~Of~Ozz
go to command prompt and type

"type D:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\WMI\trace.txt |more"

That will prevent your system from hemeraging. When youve read enough press ctrl break at the same time (you'll have to forgive me if this seems a little too tutorial)

Post back if you find anything neat =]

Good idea Wizzard... command prompt is

Start - Run - type in "cmd" click ok..

Aaron_J · December 19th, 2001, 10:14 PM

Quote:

go to command prompt and type

"type D:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles\WMI\trace.txt |more"

That will prevent your system from hemeraging. When youve read enough press ctrl break at the same time (you'll have to forgive me if this seems a little too tutorial)

Post back if you find anything neat =]

Not too much of a tutorial at all. I honestly didn't know this trick.

Will report what I find....

Sixpac_XP · December 19th, 2001, 10:19 PM

All that cmd trick will do is let you list the text file "screen by screen" so you don't load the whole file into memory.

Aaron_J · December 19th, 2001, 10:20 PM

Ok, I get an error about it not being a recognizable program or command~

I'll try something else but guess what...it grew by 120 megs since I posted this thread..... Definately something wrong here cause that a lot of text if thats what is in there...

Aaron_J · December 19th, 2001, 10:22 PM

Assigned it read only status and it still grew by another 8 megs since my last post (~2 minutes), this is almost funny.