Is this the way it's supposed to be?

[Jackson]

The LED for my HD flashes on and off once or twice per second, even
when there is no application running and the machine is just sitting
there. On my old 98SE machine the LED for the HD never flashed unless
I saved a file or opened something. The rest of the time it remained
dark while I played Solitaire or Sudoku or some such thing.

It seems unnatural that my Dell Dimension C521 with XP (MCE) should
have the HD almost perpetually active.

Is this the way it's supposed to be? Is your HD continually flashing?

Thanks

 

[JS]

You may have the Windows Indexing service active or an AV background scan in
progress.

JS

 

[Jackson]

You may have the Windows Indexing service active or an AV background scan in
progress.

JS

I don't think so. Indexing is turned off and there is no application
running.

 

[JS]

Two useful utilities:
Diskmon:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Diskmon.mspx
Process Monitor:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/processmonitor.mspx

JS

 

[Anthony Buckland]

I don't think so. Indexing is turned off and there is no application
running.

Re that last remark: I used to think that way, until I bought WinTasks
(I'm sure there are other similar programs, maybe free?) and saw
how many tasks are running when I don't think I'm doing anything.
The suggestion you got about an antivurus background scan
brings up the subject of virus scans in general -- have you scanned
recently with an uptodate virus database?

 

[RalfG]

Running processes list in Windows TaskManager

Process Explorer -free

What's Running? - free for non commercial use

CodeStuff Starter (has running processes list) -free

ServiWin (drivers list) -free