ITunes stealing Hard Drive!

Last night I ran a Software Update on my computer, which contained the following: Security Update 8-22-05 (somethign like that on the numbers, its just the date), Quicktime (can't remember the number, its the latest), Mac OS X 10.3.(the latest number), and iTunes 5. Once it was all done and it restarted, I started to listen to my iTunes cause I wanted to listen to music. Suddenly, like 15 min into the music, I get a little box that says my Hard Disk is almost full, and warning me (I've gotten this several times in the past week cause I dotn' ahve a big HD and I have been DLing anime from my friend's FTP). THe thing was, all I had running was AIM and iTunes. AIM automatically opens up when my comp starts up. Nothing else does that on my comp. I had JUST restarted the machine too so I know nothing was open and I forgot about it or something, or that ran without the symbol in my dock. So I go check how much HD I have left: 234 MB. It should ahve been over 900MB. It was before I installed all the programs. Yes, programs take up space, ok. So I just say, ok. Go back to my music. About two songs later, I look back at my HD cause I had to check some program, and it was 200 MB left. NOTHIGN had happened. No IMs, nothing. Just playing music, that has been on my comp forever (well, since my last reformatting, and the one before that etc etc, but its been played before).
So then I do this experiment. I play a few songs, and check the HD after each. No fewer than 3 MB was gone after every song. I got it down to 180 somethign MBs left. By playing music. I went into iTunes, looked at all the Preferences, tried doing different things, went into System Preferences and messed around there, I checked my library thinking maybe I coudl find where this missing HD was beign stored....nothign. I did find a duplicate music stash from when I transferred the music back to my comp after my reformatting in May (I deleted this, gave me 4 something GB, that was so beautiful). So I quit iTunes, and wait a while, chatting on AIM. And it seems to stop. Then I notice it has just slowed down....sooooo much. Its still happening, I'm losing HD, but just in smaller chunks. Or maybe less noticeable becuase I'm dealing in GB not MB now. I had 5.33 GB, and I restarted to see if that would help, and I suddenly had 5.39 GB after the restart. (my Trash is empty except for one file my comp says is locked, but thats another story). Then, when I turned it on today, it had 5.32 GB. It had just sat there OFF all night. Then, this morning, before I left for class, it was 5.29GB. Now its 5.15. I ahven't done anything that uses that much. I wrote a SHORT Word file. THATS ALL. I haven't run any programs other than AIM, Safari (my browser), and Mail. None. My Firewall is Up, I have all my sharing preferences turned off, I even ran a Disk Utility last night and repaired all my permissions because I thought maybe it was a problem with the downloading. Nothing. I just don't understand how I can randomly be loosing, then briefly gaining back some, then loosing more HD like this......and its not like I have a lot anyways.
I went onto Apple.com and read the message boards about iTunes 5, and saw how it screws up people's comps. But I didn't see anythign like my specific problem. And I can't make posts there because my AppleCare account ran out last spring (its a 3 year plan). So I'm SOL. My dad is coming on Wed, maybe he can help me, or at least see the problem for himself and work on it from home sorta. Otherwise, my comp seems to be running just fine. I've taken EXCELLENT care of it since I reformatted. Shut off every night, goes to sleep after an hour, etc. I'm out of reasons for what is going on.....gah!!! I just don't have a lot of space as is, I really don't need to be loosing it randomly like this.

Now my computer won't go to sleep on its own (its set to go to sleep after an hour in Energy Saver).
I ran the Activity monitor to see what it was, and there's something called "WindowServer" and "HP Communications" running.....but I dont' know what those two things are, and I have no programs open except the Activity monitor itself. I don't know how to stop them running, and I don't want to delete somethign important to the computer (if I do find them)
Also, if anyone wants to email me directly, please use [email protected] The [email protected] is now defunct and I won't get the mail.

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