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Windows 10 Bug: DoSVC files occupy all hard drive space

So I started my PC running Windows 10 as usual and noticed on Steam that there was an update for Team Fortress 2 available.

The update would not complete and the error message returned was that there was not enough disk space available to apply it.

This on a 160 Gigabyte Solid State Drive with Windows 10, some apps and two Steam games installed. Something was not right and I decided to investigate to find out more about that.

I downloaded WizTree, a free program that displays the storage space distribution on the drive you select, and let it ran its course on the main drive Windows 10 was installed on.

windows doscvc

The result was astonishing. Not only did the program confirm that zero space was available for the drive, it highlighted that the folder dosvc in the Windows directory occupied more than 81 Gigabyte.

The full folder path is C:\Windows\Logs\Ddosvc.

A total of 333436 files were found in the folder most with a size of 256 or 512 Kilobyte, the file extension etl and yesterday as the creation date.

Dosvc, or more precisely DoSVC, can be linked to the Windows service Delivery Optimization which, according to its description "performs content delivery optimization tasks".

delivery optimization

Now, if you stop the service you will notice that most logs get deleted automatically in the process.

  1. Tap on the Windows-key, type services and hit enter to open the Services Manager of the operating system.
  2. Locate "Deliver Optimization" in the list of local services. It's status should show that it is running.
  3. Right-click on it and select stop.
  4. Double-click on it afterwards and switch its startup type from automatic to disabled.

This reduced the occupied storage space to 30.3 Gigabyte and 123871 files in the directory. Since I had no other option at this point in time, I made the decision to remove all files in the dosvc folder to free up disk space.

This can be done in File Explorer for instance or any other file manager you may be using. You will receive a prompt that you need administrative privileges to delete the files.

Tip: Hold down Shift while you right-click and select delete or hit the delete button to bypass the Recycle Bin.

The filling up of the hard drive by the service is a bug obviously, but it is a serious one, especially on Solid State Drive systems thanks to the number of files that get written to the folder as a consequence.

This article was first seen on ComTek's "TekBits" Technology News

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