fidbox.dat is eating my hard drive!

killbox appears to be an interesting and useful tool.

However, the problem is not purely "deleting' fidbox.dat. I probably should have mentioned that there are ways to remove fidbox.dat. For example, it can be removed from Safe Mode.

But it will immediately start regenerating. Kaspersky web site shows how to get rid of it, but warns that by doing so your computer will "slow down" during the time while it is regenerating.

The real problem is thus not to simply remove fidbox.dat, but to disable the useless mechanism that builds it. I say "useless", because the embedded KAV builds it even if it is disabled.

I should also add that I have posted a question to the ZoneLabs tech support.

Have you tried this?

1. Delete the file in safe mode.
2. Create a text file named fidbox.dat at that location.
3. Reboot the machine and see what happens.

Windows file system should prevent the creation of this file by KAV because there is already a file existing on that name. That way you can get around it?

Cheers,
Rajesh

Might be worth a try. Since fidbox.dat is added to constantly and grows extremely rapidly (up to several GB in a day or two), I think this would only work, if the dummy file causes the KAV iSwift function to fail and just do nothing.

Hardly seems like a robust solution. But be interesting to "see what happens." If I don't get a good answer from ZA tech support, I might give it a shot.

The following is a followup which is taken from a thread that I opened in the ZA forum:

ZA tech support had escalated my ticket. I now have the response from the higher level support -- "we are not going to fix it."

As has been surmised in this thread by Oldsod and jazzi, since ZA does not really maintain the Kaspersky AV, they just won't touch it.

Possible workarounds:

1. Keep ZASS 8 and NOD32 in place. Periodically "reset" fidbox by removing it. While this can be done from safe mode, another way I have found is to use Device Manage > View > Show Hidden Devices to temporarily disable KLIF. Then the fidbox files can be removed. Then restore KLIF. This requires two reboots, just as the Safe Mode approach, so users choice.

2. Revert NOD32 to a previous version. I have found that the problem does not occur on other systems with ZASS 8 and and older version of NOD32.

3. Revert to ZA Pro and keep NOD32. The problem does not then occur, as fidbox is not used in ZA Pro. However, the reason I upgraded to ZASS was to eliminate the need for two other products, which previously I ran: SpySweeper (anti-spyware) and MailFrontier (anti-spam). Both of those products have been bundled into ZASS in a similar way as Kaspersky AV.

Some additional rabbit holes that could be pursued:

1. Perhaps ESET, the publisher of NOD32, might have some way to fix the problem, as it does not occur with their back level version.

2. Perhaps Kaspersky would fix the issue.

I am not too happy about investing the time in either of these courses. Especially since I do not have a registered Kaspersky product. ESET has been quite responsive in the past, so I might try that approach.

Did you try the killbox? You should need only a single reboot.

Cheers,
Rajesh

I don't know how that would help. The problem is not deleting the file -- that is easily done. The problem is that it immediately regenerates and grows into a huge, heavily fragmented file.

Continuously deleting it is a workaround, but not very acceptable.

Well, I was mentioning as an alternative to the possible workaround's you have mentioned (number 1).

Cheers,
Rajesh

As such, I agree, it is a different version of the workaround.

I finally adopted yet another approach -- disable all scanning in ZASS, and simply rely on the AV and ASpyware in NOD32. (I was not aware that NOD32 had added ASpyware scanning until looking into this issue.)

The remove-reinstall of ZASS should clean up the fidbox issue.

Unfortunately, I have also learned that the iSwift technology adds vast amounts of ObjectIDs which cannot be gotten rid of short of an OS reload. This is the issue that impacts chkdsk performance.

There are several pertinent threads on this subject in the ZA forum. I am hoping that eventually Kaspersky/Zonelabs will solve this problem as well.