# My laptop mysteriously maxed itself out on memory on its own and now only shows a black screen **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 5, 2022, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964 "2022-09-05T03:51:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/1 "2022-09-05T03:51:46Z")
Have a weird computer issue and I’d appreciate any advice: I have a laptop (2018 Asus Vivobook) that I have kept disconnected from Internet for a year. I haven’t downloaded or added anything to it. But recently it suddenly kept increasing in memory usage on its own to the point where the C-Drive was 99.9% maxed out on memory and now today it won’t do anything - I turn it on, and it has a black blank screen (still lit enough that I know it’s turned on,) but cannot show anything. I assume this means it’s now 100% maxed out on C-Drive memory. Anyone know why the laptop would do this by itself? ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/2 "2022-09-05T03:59:18Z")
Did you have programs running on it at the time? Maybe in the background? Programs create many temporary files, and a program could run into a bug that creates an infinite number of temporary files or perhaps fills up temporary files until your laptop runs out of space. The OS also creates temporary files that can take up lots of disk space. My guess is you will need to do an OS reinstall. I hope you have everything you need backed up already. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/3 "2022-09-05T04:00:21Z")
I would always close the programs. I’d temporarily run Audacity, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office but they would be closed down once I was done with them. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/4 "2022-09-05T04:03:13Z")
Are you running Windows 10? What did you do when you saw the drive was 99.9% maxed out? Did you see any huge files laying around that you’d never seen before? ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/5 "2022-09-05T04:21:02Z")
The way I would approach this may be too technical for you, but would be fairly trivial for a computer repair place. Get a bootable Linux (I usually use Ubuntu) USB drive and use the GUI Disk Usage Analyzer. You will most likely find a bunch of log files or temp files that never got cleaned up. If that is too techical, I assure you there are better ways that are way more technical, but still pretty easy for your average computer repair technician. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/6 "2022-09-05T04:28:04Z")
I didn’t particularly pay attention but I don’t recall seeing anything that was unfamiliar. The laptop was running just fine, then suddenly one day, “You’re almost full” and suddenly programs couldn’t work - Windows Media Player couldn’t play, etc. Then the next day, it’s all black and laptop can’t even show a screen. ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/7 "2022-09-05T04:40:59Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I would always close the programs. I’d temporarily run Audacity, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office but they would be closed down once I was done with them. Simply closing a program is not always enough. Programs are supposed to release the resources that they use on the computer, but that doesn’t always happen. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/8 "2022-09-05T05:56:30Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > But recently it suddenly kept increasing in memory usage on its own to the point where the C-Drive was 99.9% maxed out on memory That isn’t memory. Which is why your thread title made absolutely no sense to me. I kept trying to understand how a laptop could keep increasing the amount of RAM available to it. Also how that could be anything other than a really cool thing if it did happen. What you’re talking about is storage space, and the fact that your laptop somehow ran out of it. Interestingly, I had the exact same thing (minus the absolute hit-the-wall part) just a couple months ago on a Mac laptop. Turned out to be a rogue antivirus program called Malware Bytes was attempting to download something (probably its own update) and was depositing 220 zillion small files in the TMP folder so my available free space was shrinking: 650 GB, 400 GB, 210 GB, 86 GB, _WARNING: you have only 605 MB of free space_ … It repeated itself (I nuked all the little files from TMP but they came back) until I deleted every piece of Malware Bytes. Probably no bearing on your situation, but make use of some utility that can tell you exactly what is occupying your hard disk (even if it requires removing it from your laptop and plugging it into some other computer for analysis) and see if some rogue process is filling up your disk. If you have a Mac or access to one you can use Grand Perspective, for instance (and it can analyze an NTFS disk as easily as anything else) And don’t call your storage space “memory”, please. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/9 "2022-09-05T08:33:04Z")
Shit, I have Malware Bytes on my PC. Should I get rid of it? How? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/10 "2022-09-05T08:42:42Z")
Not necessarily. I assume it had a buggy updater, that may have affected _only_ that version and perhaps _only_ for my specific OS version and environment and platform. I hadn’t had any problems in the 2-3 years I’d had it installed and running. But all of a sudden it was downloading a ludicrous number of fairly small files and gradually filling my entire hard drive with them, so I had to kill it off. ---
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/11 "2022-09-05T10:14:01Z")
I don’t think that advising someone who refers to disk space as memory to use a bootable Linux drive is very constructive. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/12 "2022-09-05T11:40:46Z")
I do appreciate your concern, but please notice that I suggested that this would be trivial for a computer technician, and suggest the OP visit one. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/13 "2022-09-05T12:06:48Z")
Have you tried safe mode? Other then that a bootable disk utility, or just getting a command prompt and delete something relatively harmless just to free up enough space to get in. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/14 "2022-09-05T14:39:25Z")
I would start with chkdsk > **[How to Run CHKDSK in Windows 10 \[3 Easy Ways\]](https://www.supereasy.com/how-to-run-chkdsk-in-windows-10-3-easy-ways/)** > > Everything you need to know about CHKDSK in Windows 10!There are 3 ways to run CHKDSK in Windows 10. Just browse through the list and take your pick... You may have a failing hard drive. Chkdsk will find bad sectors. If chkdsk reports ok. You’ll need to find the largest files. You also need to find whats creating them. Malware? I’ve seen PC’s hijacked as file servers. Hackers put pirate videos on them and offer them on torrent sites. The fix depends on what big files you find. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/OBsDMfkmUvQ/hqdefault.jpg "How to Find the Largest Files in Windows 10 - How to find Large Size Files on Windows") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBsDMfkmUvQ) ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/15 "2022-09-05T17:58:42Z")
Ah, interesting. Uh…I use Malwarebytes on both of my laptops. Should I be worried about my other laptop, now, that it would be maxing itself out on storage space? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/16 "2022-09-05T20:21:28Z")
I have yet to enccounter any other person who has had this issue with Malwarebytes. Rather than your takeaway being “Malwarebytes is bad news, it can mess up your computer”, I think it should be “Damn near any process on a computer can go awry and start filling up your hard drive with redundant or irrelevant crap… even something as innocuous as Malwarebytes!” Here is what I like about Grand Perspective, a functionality you should seek equivalent for among Windows applications: [![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/0/0f6bdf86d861d7c48b100df9f5c86b729b370402.jpeg) ](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/0/0f6bdf86d861d7c48b100df9f5c86b729b370402.jpeg) Notice that it not only lets you spot individual HUGE files, it also organizes and color-codes all the tiny little ones by folder and subfolder, and also file type, and you can hover and see the file path including file name at the bottom. That’s how I found a folder chock-full of relatively tiny (less than 200 MB each) files that, together, were taking up over 500 GB of space; they all had nearly-identical names with an incrementing number and when I opened them in a plain text editor I found identifying strings that gave me the clue about what was putting them there. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-laptop-mysteriously-maxed-itself-out-on-memory-on-its-own-and-now-only-shows-a-black-screen/970964/17 "2022-09-05T20:45:20Z")
There’s a [corresponding product](https://windirstat.net/) for Windows, which I use on a fairly regular basis to keep track of what’s taking up the most space. None of which helps if the OP can’t boot, but it might be useful in future to prevent a recurrence.