I was in a hurry when I wrote this, and didn’t get to go through it to sufficiently de-geek it. Even though this is filed under nerdy talk, it should still make some sense. Will fix that up here soon.
I’m cleaning up files and ran across this one, c:faceprov.log. I’ve got a Lenovo and I’m guessing it’s from the face detection feature, but I tried googling it this morning and only got a handful of results; most of them in languages I couldn’t decipher. For the record, I’ve deleted it without any ill effects so far.
On a side note, I’m a little .. mystified? Confused? I’m not sure what the word is I’m looking for, because I’m not angry. Just wondering why a smart company like Lenova would install Vista on a tiny C partition, and leave it configured to automatically store all programs and user profile data on that same space.
Granted, with a fair amount of work you can force Windows to save data to another drive, but my laptop has this special little ‘novo’ button — right by the power button, no less — that you press and it reformats the windows partition. Potentially undoing all my changes. No prompt for a password even. A one-button format -might- be a good idea had they taken the time to make windows save data to another drive. But as is, if the user isn’t savvy enough to save their data to D, they lose it all. Why,
Lenovo, why? You’re such a great company otherwise…
Yesterday I upgraded Open Office update and forgot to set the installation to my D drive. That extra 150 MB or so on C was enough to crowd my pagefile in a big way. As you might imagine, this caused a series of unfortunate events, and it took me till this morning to figure out why I kept crashing.
But the good news is that -because- my system kept crashing, I thought to move my whole page file over to that large D drive where it can have its own dedicated 4GB. Even with 3GB of physical ram and memory-hogging features disabled, I can tell Windows relies heavily on my virtual memory, particularly when I’m using photoshop for a print job. If I recall correctly, the laptop came with just 4GB free on C, and the difference I’ve seen from switching it over to the other drive is significant.
I thought about posting a how-to here, but the fact is, Microsoft has its own how-tos on their site, and there are dozens of other sites out there with how-tos and more information still. If you’d still like MY how-to, drop me an email. A few dozen emails later, I decided I may as well post what I’d been sending people as well. So it’s up there & ready for you to use at your own liability.
If you need further help, I don’t know whether Lenovo’s tech support can help step you through such drastic system modifications but I can say they’ve been excellent when I’ve called them for hardware issues. If you -still- would rather have me step you through it, drop me a note and we can try to schedule something via phone. Just know that as a single mom taking a full load at college and trying to provide for my kids, the phrase “free time” is a paradox. Good luck!
Legend of Velda 
Good info.
since you decided not to have a how-to’s, can you provide links to good how-to’s.
Thanks again
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Could you send me that how to?
Thanks
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I’ve linked it into the article. Hoping that helps.
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WOW! this is very good information. You have saved me a day of agony and stress!
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I read that you deleted the ‘c:faceprov.log’entry. You sauid you had no ill effects. Is this still true? I totally agree Lenovo hampered us all, My C drive is partioned to 30 with the rest in D. I have tried to locate all I can in D but C keeps filling up and its to the point I don’t know what else to delete. I see that c:faceprov.log is gigantic relativly speaking. I deleted the face recognition program long ago 1 because I don’t need it and 2 it was taking up space…I will back up that file and delete it. Please let me know if you’ve had any problems since you wrote this. Thank you!
C Carpenter
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No problems at all. Lenovo’s a great company & this laptop is extremely sturdy, so once you get the C/D partition thing worked out it’s great. Read the D for Data article I ended up posting & that should help you clear things up a bit. Good luck!
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had the exact same problems with my lenovo.
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This is indeed an issue.
Faceprov.log can be deleted with no consequences.
As to the poor partitioning, this goes back to when IBM made PCs (as in, before they sold their PC division to Lenovo). I had an Aptiva with Win95 that had the same stupid tricks, with a tiny C as default, with all other space partitioned elsewhere.
Although, back then, OSes were distributed with computers on CDs (or floppies, but I have 95 CDs) rather than on a hidden partition, and partition shifting was harder.
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I wouldn’t have any problem with it if it shipped with the OS configured to store data on the larger drive, especially if its restore option was also configured that way. But putting the OS on a tiny drive that’s configured by default to store user data also in that tiny space is just silly.
And yeah I remember those days of Win95 and the mess repartitioning was back then… actually I was doing tech support at that time and it made for some rather interesting calls. Yay for modern file systems 🙂
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I looked at it’s programming and it has a lot to to with the windows log in…almost seams like a virus.
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can I delete faceprov from my C drive, it huge file that I do not need. is there any consequences if i do dso?
please answer.
thank you
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Hi Julia,
Yes, go ahead and delete it, unless you plan on looking through the logs somehow. I don’t see a reason to keep it there, and on this kind of setup, it just causes issues.
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que es FaceProv???
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que es faceprov
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Hello. I would like to ask: does anybody know what´s the function of this FaceProv.log file? I am not an expert but also my fist impression was that it´s a virus…
I deleted it and it´s there again, monitoring the log in again.
Is there any way to delete it permanently?
Thank you for reply!
Blanka
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The file FaceProv.log has probably something to do with the face recognition. According to several anti-virus programs my computer has been ´clean´. After I uninstalled the Lenovo´s VeriFace program, the notepad file from the disk C is gone and doesn´t come back after each time I turn the computer on like it was before.
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Hi I tried to find your how to because I’m having the issue of a very full lenovo C drive but it seems the page is no longer available?
Any chance you still have a copy somewhere?
Kind regards,
R
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Thanks! I’ll see if I can find it. You can delete faceprov but the bigger thing is to move your document folders over to D. Try this, but only if you understand the steps & are responsible:
https://legendofvelda.com/2009/06/23/d-is-for-data/
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