I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed to
watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in memory,
and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it showed
100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero. Obviously, I had to
reboot the computer to get it back to normal.

I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen
similar things happen under Windows XP Pro 32-bit in the past too.
Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own
SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory too, over 300MB by itself!

What could be happening here?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:

> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed
> to watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in
> memory, and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it
> showed 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero.
> Obviously, I had to reboot the computer to get it back to normal.

> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen similar things happen under Windows XP Pro
> 32-bit in the past too.

That can be just the drive retrying on marginal sectors.

Post the Everest SMART report on that drive.

> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory
> too, over 300MB by itself!

Are you saying that it doesnt when that isnt happening with the drive ?

> What could be happening here?

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed to
> watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in memory,
> and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it showed
> 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero. Obviously, I had to
> reboot the computer to get it back to normal.
>
> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen
> similar things happen under Windows XP Pro 32-bit in the past too.
> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own
> SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory too, over 300MB by itself!
>
> What could be happening here?
>
> Yousuf Khan
Check with the 'puter maker? May be a scan or diagnostics. HP does
this on my machine. I usually just kill it.

On 01/12/2010 08:12, Yousuf Khan wrote:
> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed to
> watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in memory,
> and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it showed
> 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero. Obviously, I had to
> reboot the computer to get it back to normal.
>
> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen
> similar things happen under Windows XP Pro 32-bit in the past too.
> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own
> SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory too, over 300MB by itself!
>
> What could be happening here?
>
> Yousuf Khan

That used to happen a lot on systems with insufficient memory, swapping
program segments in and out from the page file.
I guess it could also happen where the page file was either not used or
too small an allocation.

Ed

On 01/12/2010 3:43 AM, Rod Speed wrote:
> Yousuf Khan wrote:
>
>> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
>> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
>> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed
>> to watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in
>> memory, and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it
>> showed 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero.
>> Obviously, I had to reboot the computer to get it back to normal.
>
>> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen similar things happen under Windows XP Pro
>> 32-bit in the past too.
>
> That can be just the drive retrying on marginal sectors.
>
> Post the Everest SMART report on that drive.

Here it is:

***report start***

> [ Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 (STF604MH0UR52B) ]
>
> 01 Raw Read Error Rate 16 99 99 65537 OK: Value is normal
> 02 Throughput Performance 54 132 132 113 OK: Value is normal
> 03 Spin Up Time 24 146 146 25756040 OK: Value is normal
> 04 Start/Stop Count 0 100 100 408 OK: Always passing
> 05 Reallocated Sector Count 5 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
> 07 Seek Error Rate 67 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
> 08 Seek Time Performance 20 125 125 33 OK: Value is normal
> 09 Power-On Time Count 0 99 99 12906 OK: Always passing
> 0A Spin Retry Count 60 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
> 0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 368 OK: Always passing
> C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 100 100 409 OK: Always passing
> C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 100 100 409 OK: Always passing
> C2 Temperature 0 166 166 22, 36 OK: Always passing
> C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
> C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
> C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
> C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK: Always passing

***report end***

>> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory
>> too, over 300MB by itself!
>
> Are you saying that it doesnt when that isnt happening with the drive ?

Well, I don't normally check out the size of this program, but when I
have done so, it's usually 30-50% of that size, i.e. between 100MB to 150MB.

Yousuf Khan

On 01/12/2010 8:40 AM, LouB wrote:
> Check with the 'puter maker? May be a scan or diagnostics. HP does this
> on my machine. I usually just kill it.

I'm the 'puter maker.

Yousuf Khan

On 01/12/2010 9:51 AM, Big Steel wrote:
> If svchost.exe is not running out of the windows.system32 folder, then
> it could be malware that it is running. You should check what
> svchost.exe is hosting by using Process Explorer. PE is free to use, and
> you can use Bing or Google to find out how to use PE to look at a
> running process, see what it is hosting and see what directory a
> process/program is located when it is running.

Yes, I know about ProcExplorer, that is what I was using to report this
size.

Yousuf Khan

On 01/12/2010 10:36 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:
> That used to happen a lot on systems with insufficient memory, swapping
> program segments in and out from the page file.
> I guess it could also happen where the page file was either not used or
> too small an allocation.
>
> Ed

Yeah, that was my usual gut-reaction initial guess too. But I have 8GB
of memory on a 64-bit system, and taskman was showing that I was only
using about 4.9GB out of the 8GB. That's still quite a lot being used
up, but still not saturated. During normal operations, the memory being
used up ranges between 2.5 to 3.0GB.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> On 01/12/2010 8:40 AM, LouB wrote:
>> Check with the 'puter maker? May be a scan or diagnostics. HP does this
>> on my machine. I usually just kill it.
>
> I'm the 'puter maker.
>
> Yousuf Khan

Thought that might be.
How about the drive maker?
Pls report back when you find the cause.

Yousuf Khan <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
> Rod Speed wrote
>> Yousuf Khan wrote

>>> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
>>> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
>>> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed
>>> to watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in
>>> memory, and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it
>>> showed 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero.
>>> Obviously, I had to reboot the computer to get it back to normal.

>>> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen similar things happen under Windows XP Pro
>>> 32-bit in the past too.

>> That can be just the drive retrying on marginal sectors.

>> Post the Everest SMART report on that drive.

> Here it is:

> ***report start***

>> [ Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 (STF604MH0UR52B) ]
>>
>> 01 Raw Read Error Rate 16 99 99 65537 OK: Value is normal
>> 02 Throughput Performance 54 132 132 113 OK: Value is normal
>> 03 Spin Up Time 24 146 146 25756040 OK: Value is normal
>> 04 Start/Stop Count 0 100 100 408 OK: Always passing
>> 05 Reallocated Sector Count 5 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
>> 07 Seek Error Rate 67 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
>> 08 Seek Time Performance 20 125 125 33 OK: Value is normal
>> 09 Power-On Time Count 0 99 99 12906 OK: Always passing
>> 0A Spin Retry Count 60 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
>> 0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 368 OK: Always passing
>> C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 100 100 409 OK: Always passing
>> C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 100 100 409 OK: Always passing
>> C2 Temperature 0 166 166 22, 36 OK: Always passing
>> C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
>> C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
>> C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
>> C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK: Always passing

> ***report end***

That drive is fine, so its not that.

>>> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory
>>> too, over 300MB by itself!

>> Are you saying that it doesnt when that isnt happening with the drive ?

> Well, I don't normally check out the size of this program, but when I have done so, it's usually 30-50% of that size,
> i.e. between 100MB to 150MB.

Likely it is that, but since svchost.exe is used for hosting a lot of stuff, its not necessarily bad.

Have a look at svchost.exe with google and you will find its quite complex what it can be used for.