Too much HD activity

[Guest]

For days now I am experiencing continuous hard disk activity on my laptop.
Also when it's idle. The disk activity warning light keeps going. it never
stops.
I have already disabled the indexing feature. My Anti Spyware and Anti Virus
is op to date and running. Any bright ideas?
The only new programs I installed recently: TuneUp Utilities and Norton
GoBack, but because I thought one of these might cause the problem I took
them off again. No difference. So, I already re-installed them.

My system has 512 MB RAM, 60GB internal HD and is connected via USB2 to an
external 100GB Maxtor drive for backup purposes.

 

[Kelly]

Hi Josi,

What is running in the background? Read the report file from here:

Windows XP Startup Programs Tracker
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_u.htm#xp_util

Don't depend on AV. Run this combo:

Run Ad-Aware SE, Spybot and HijackThis:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads31.html

Note: Update the first two programs, once installed, before running.

Free Online Virus Scan
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

Lastly:

Run the Task Manager, go to View/Select Columns, and turn on the following
columns: "I/O Read Bytes" and "I/O Write Bytes." This will give you details
as to which process is accessing the disk.

Although many processes will be accessing the disk, look for one with a high
total or a fast rate of increase, especially when you hear the drive being
accessed.



--

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com

 

[Shenan Stanley]

For days now I am experiencing continuous hard disk activity on my
laptop. Also when it's idle. The disk activity warning light keeps
going. it never stops.
I have already disabled the indexing feature. My Anti Spyware and
Anti Virus is op to date and running. Any bright ideas?
The only new programs I installed recently: TuneUp Utilities and
Norton GoBack, but because I thought one of these might cause the
problem I took them off again. No difference. So, I already
re-installed them.

My system has 512 MB RAM, 60GB internal HD and is connected via USB2
to an external 100GB Maxtor drive for backup purposes.

Is your hard drive so loud or the light so bright, it is bothering you? Or
is this just paranoia?

If you have done a full system scan with a reliable antivirus (other than
the one you have installed) and anti-malware scans with multiple
applications and turned off the unneeded services and checked to see that
the TweakUI setting for "Optimize hard disk when idle" is turned off and
checked your hard disk for errors (CHKDSK) and defragmented it - then no - I
really don't have other ideas. =)

 

[Guest]

For days now I am experiencing continuous hard disk activity on my laptop.
Also when it's idle. The disk activity warning light keeps going. it never
stops.

I have already disabled the indexing feature. My Anti Spyware and Anti Virus
is op to date and running. Any bright ideas?

The only new programs I installed recently: TuneUp Utilities and Norton
GoBack, but because I thought one of these might cause the problem I took
them off again. No difference. So, I already re-installed them.

I am 99.9 percent certain the culprit is Norton GoBack because the exact
same thing happened to me when I experimented with GoBack about six months
ago. Not only that, but you are going to discover that removing GoBack is
going to be very difficult and take a very long time. Sorry.

By the way, avoid utility suites like Tuneup Utilities, too. XP runs best
when it is operated the way it was designed to run. About the only third
party utility you should even think about trying is a substitute
defragmentation program for the built in Disk Defragmenter program, and even
then you shouldn't do it unless you are the type of person who would never do
it at all unless you could do it automatically in the background -- and if
you are already investing in programs like GoBack (or Systemworks) and
TuneUp, you aren't that person. From an overall performance perspective, as
far as I know no one has every measured or documented any transparent
performance gain using a third party defragmenter -- and many people have
described problems, errors, and slowdowns with these other utility suites
(both system suites and security suites).

Ken