Symantec anti-virus is filling up my harddrive

I've been tracking down where all my disk space is being used and I found out that this folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\
Application Data\Symantec\Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition\7.5

Is taking up 28 gigs (on my only 80 gig harddrive). The files taking up all that space are 500MB - 1500MB files called things like: 00000074, 0000007A, 000000D8. There are 27 of these files and they go back for more than 1 year.

My question is identical to this one, but the selected answer doesn't work for me. After lowering the cache limit from 1800MB to 500MB and clicking to clear the cache, the files are still there, so the answer didn't work for me.

Could this be caused by killing virus scans early? I don't have permission to kill the process, but my computer becomes useless while its scanning, so I always restart.

Solution 1:

First of all, SAV Corp 7.5 is pretty much useless these days, it will miss A LOT of viruses, even with up-to-date defs. :)

Regardless of that, those are going to be definition updates, but probably from a previous version or a failed update, and that's why lowering the cache number doesn't help any (they're disjointed and SAV doesn't know they're there).

You should be able to just delete them. You may have to do it in Safe Mode.

Perhaps move them someplace else instead of deleting at first, at least if your worried you may need to put them back. If it works find after a reboot, you're safe to axe them permanently.

Here's some references:

Here and Here.

Hope that helps.

Solution 2:

I'm no longer forced to use Symantec, but in the past, I've been able to simply delete the offending cache files; have you tried that? Perhaps you could schedule a job to delete files older than 6 months, or whatever, and have it run every day, or at login.

As for the cause; I was never able to determine one, and I won't share my more cynical thoughts. I choose not to use Symantec, now, though.

Edit: techie007 above is right; those are probably defs, not cache files.