Hi There

I'm hopeless with computers, so I hope this makes sense.

When I open Internet Explorer it comes up with something called IP Cop, where you can press Connect or Disconnect. Basically that dials up and then once it's connected you can go to other websites. Of late, it's had this message underneath the Connect and Disconnect buttons which says

Filesystem full: /dev/harddisk2 Free=5%

I can't FIND this disk thing that is apparently low on space. That percentage has been dropping gradually since it appeared at 10%. It's happened before, and when it gets to 0% it won't load sites. Then it magically started, well, fixing itself and it's only just happened again.

What I'm wondering is how I'd fix this myself. I don't even know what it means. I've tried 'Clear Cache' and all these other weird sounding options, but nothing works.

Any ideas? Keep in mind that I have no knowledge of any of these, so don't assume I know what you mean. Treat me like a six year old.

Thank you!

i dunno if this will help

buut

start>control panel>performance and maintence>free up space in your hard disk.

& try deleting your temp files.

I tried that, and it freed space on the computer but not according to this stupid internet thing :hmph:

Thanks though, sweetie.

IP Cop? I've never heard of that, Now I'm not sure but it could be a virus, or maybe a program you downloaded, Do you have two hard drives in your computer?, because the dev/harddisk2 is refering to a second hard drive...

Humm...very strange. I take it you're using a Windows machine?

The reason I say it's strange is that /dev/harddisk2 (or /dev/anything) is how disks are represented on a UNIX or Linux based system, not a Windows one.

OK ... I did some research. IP Cop is a Linux-based firewall ( http://ipcop.org/ ). From their FAQ, "IPCop lets you take an old PC and convert it into an appliance that will. 1. Secure your home network from the internet. 2. Improve the performance of web browsers (by keeping frequently used information)"

Actually this is a fairly neat product. What it's doing is storing stuff you've looked up on the web, so that when you visit the site again, it just gives you the information rather than downloading it from the internet fresh again. (This is called a proxy cache, by the way.) And this machine -- wherever it is -- is running out of hard disk space.

The system is not stupid, however, so when it starts to run out of space, it cleans some stuff off. Probably stuff that you haven't looked at in a while, or don't access very often.

So: the real question is, where is this machine? I'm thinking either somebody in your family set this up for you and just didn't tell you / explain it, or maybe your ISP is doing it for you. I'd never heard of an ISP doing this, but I saw on your profile that you're from Iceland, and it would make more sense there than here in the States: they may be doing this to lighten the load on the transatlantic cable connections. It doesn't make sense for everyone to download the same Google front-page graphic over an expensive undersea cable a thousand times over.

If your computer is plugged directly into the internet (your computer goes into the telephone line or cable modem, however you're connecting) then it's on your ISP's end. But if you have a home network, this might be in your house somewhere.

Hope this helps. PM me if it doesn't make sense and I'll try to give a better explanation.

Kate lives in melbourne, I doubt it's an ISP Proxy.

Kate, ask whoever sets up the computers in your house because as the kindly soul above me pointed out, you have a linux based proxy.

Wow. Okay. Thanks everyone :)

If it's a proxy, just set it so you have a direct connection to the Internet, and you kill two birds with one stone; a) you aren't doing something illegal by stealing others' bandwidth, b) you're fixing your problem.

Kind regards,
Chris