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XP SP2 constant hard drive access

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by zuch 1 view

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I notice the hard drive is operating constantly- with no input from operator or other pending operations.
Tried to refine msconfig startup but to no avail.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanx

Simon

12 replies

by captbilly1eye

Hi Simon.
Is Indexing turned off? If not, try that. You turn it off on the General tab in the drive's Properties (right click the drive in My Computer).

Here's a tool I've used when trying to track down hard drive accessing: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/processmonitor.mspx .

Hopefully your issue is software related rather than an indication of pending HD failure.

Lemme know if this helps and what the outcome is. Good Luck.

by zuch

Hey Billy,
Thanx for your interest.
Interesting idea on indexing- but I couldn't find the key for that in the General tab in the drive's Properties (right click the drive in My Computer).

by seanferd

If you shut down before indexing finishes, it will start right up next time you boot the computer. My advice: Just turn the darn thing off.

by captbilly1eye

1. Open My Computer.
2. Right click the C Drive and select Properties.
3. Click the General tab.
4. At the bottom of that tab, remove the check in front of 'Allow Indexing Service...'.
While you are at it, remove the check in front of 'Compress drive...' if there is one there!
Both boxes should now be UNchecked.
5. Click the Apply and OK buttons.

Additionally:

Open Task Manager, click the Processes tab and arrange the list by CPU usage. This is done by clicking once or twice on the header for that column. Look to see if a particular process is regularly tying up resources. If there appears to be a culprit, Google the executable involved, investigate it's purpose and determine whether or not in can be disabled in Services (Start - Run - services.msc).

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by noogrub

I had a similar problem. Ran ProcMon and saw that I had constant writes via my wireless connection. Unplugged router, it stopped. Ran Norton and showed clean, ran AdAware and showed clean, ran Spybot and found nothing, but continued to show these accesses. Hard drive would make tiny "tink" noise every 1 second exactly. Toggled all sorts of services to try and find it to no avail. Definitely tried all the indexing tips etc in various threads. But when I enabled the Windows Firewall and re-booted, the issue stopped. Instantly. So I have no idea what it was, but it's not getting through the firewall. Good luck, hope that helps.

by sgt_shultz

if this doesn't happen in Safe Mode then maybe you have malware. Often tho it is Outlook automatic archiving...

by shady108

can you list what processes are running in task manager? see whats using most cpu time

also check how much available ram you have left you may have run out and using virtual ram on hdd

by zuch

there is no one process that crops up all the time or uses more than 5 % CPU. I did check RAM and there are more than 300 MEG available.
I did see a noticeable improvement by eliminating indexing.
Simon

by zuch

Hey, thanx a lot. I did eliminate indexing and it reduced the accessing quite a bit.

by older mycroft

And, personally, I view BitDefender as Micro$oft BLOATWARE.

It appears to be nothing more than a crude, rudimentary version of what most users already have installed in the form of an antivirus package. The need for more than one disk-checker is open to debate, but I disabled BitDefender rather soon after it installed itself under the guise of an upgrade and have not suffered unduly since its timely removal.

*Personal biased opinion ... :)

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