Constant Hard Drive Activity - Can't Stop

[Blinking Seagate]

I've searched on the www and usenet, several people have reported the same
thing, nobody seems to have found a solution. When I'm not logged in or
even logged in, the hard disk is showing activity every second. It's not a
constant thrashing, just a blip blip blip of the activity light. I've seen
other XP Professional systems that don't show this symptom so I can't
believe it's normal. Here are things I've tried without success:

Turned off indexing
Scanned for virus - totally clean bill of health
Turned off autoplay
Nothing suspicious to report in task manager
De-installed Office
De-installed Adobe Reader
Windows Messenger turned off
All Microsoft updates pulled in and installed

The System Idle Process is at 99, nothing is grabbing CPU attention. Still
there's this constant once every second hard disk activity. What else is
there? It's driving me nuts!

 

[Guest]

I've searched on the www and usenet, several people have reported the same
thing, nobody seems to have found a solution. When I'm not logged in or
even logged in, the hard disk is showing activity every second. It's not a
constant thrashing, just a blip blip blip of the activity light. I've seen
other XP Professional systems that don't show this symptom so I can't
believe it's normal. Here are things I've tried without success:

Turned off indexing
Scanned for virus - totally clean bill of health
Turned off autoplay
Nothing suspicious to report in task manager
De-installed Office
De-installed Adobe Reader
Windows Messenger turned off
All Microsoft updates pulled in and installed

The System Idle Process is at 99, nothing is grabbing CPU attention. Still
there's this constant once every second hard disk activity. What else is
there? It's driving me nuts!

have you checked the disk for errors?

Flamer.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

Perhaps you can investigate this using the FileMon utility.

FileMon for Windows v7.04:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Filemon.mspx

<q>
FileMon monitors and displays file system activity on a system in real-time. Its advanced capabilities make it a powerful tool for exploring the way Windows works, seeing how applications use the files and DLLs, or tracking down problems in system or application file configurations. Filemon's timestamping feature will show you precisely when every open, read, write or delete, happens, and its status column tells you the outcome.
</q>

--
Regards,

Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows Shell/User]
Windows® Troubleshooting http://www.winhelponline.com


I've searched on the www and usenet, several people have reported the same
thing, nobody seems to have found a solution. When I'm not logged in or
even logged in, the hard disk is showing activity every second. It's not a
constant thrashing, just a blip blip blip of the activity light. I've seen
other XP Professional systems that don't show this symptom so I can't
believe it's normal. Here are things I've tried without success:

Turned off indexing
Scanned for virus - totally clean bill of health
Turned off autoplay
Nothing suspicious to report in task manager
De-installed Office
De-installed Adobe Reader
Windows Messenger turned off
All Microsoft updates pulled in and installed

The System Idle Process is at 99, nothing is grabbing CPU attention. Still
there's this constant once every second hard disk activity. What else is
there? It's driving me nuts!

 

[Bob Adkins]

I've searched on the www and usenet, several people have reported the same
thing, nobody seems to have found a solution. When I'm not logged in or
even logged in, the hard disk is showing activity every second. It's not a
constant thrashing, just a blip blip blip of the activity light. I've seen
other XP Professional systems that don't show this symptom so I can't
believe it's normal. Here are things I've tried without success:

Turned off indexing
Scanned for virus - totally clean bill of health
Turned off autoplay
Nothing suspicious to report in task manager
De-installed Office
De-installed Adobe Reader
Windows Messenger turned off
All Microsoft updates pulled in and installed

Just a hunch: How much physical RAM do you have? If you have less than
256K RAM, XP is possibly caching to the disk excessively.

Have you tried turning off most everything in the MSConfig startup
tab? If not, run MSConfig,,, un-check all but the must critical
programs, and re-boot. If the annoying HDD hyperactivity stops, then
restore 1 program at a time until the excessive activity returns.

Good luck, and let us know what solved it for you.
-

Bob

 

[Anon]

Have you run any peer 2 peer file sharing stuff in the past? you might look
at using something like zonealarm or comodo firewall to see what might be
accessing your system. I was surprised to find Norton AV stop a worm the
other night while I was using itunes. The IP address NAV identified was the
channel itunes was going in and out on, and all i was doing was adding cd's
to my library (i was not out searching the itunes store)..
I think my kids were doing some peer-2-peer file sharing- and I had a lot of
this similar drive activity until I turned off Windows firewall and went
with something a bit more informative- decided to try Comodo vs Zone Alarm
which I had used before XPSP2 and MS's highest recommendations to use their
own firewall.

Paul

 

[Blinking Seagate]

have you checked the disk for errors?

Yes, the drive has been thoroughly scanned both for hardware and chkdsk
errors, everything is fine there. If I boot to a DOS floppy or to a BIOS
screen, the problem of the constant disk polling goes away. The problem
only exists when I boot into XP, either just sitting at the logon screen or
actually signed in.

If you have less than 256K RAM,
XP is possibly caching to the disk excessively.

I have 1GB of RAM. I've also tried turning things off with MSconfig. That
has no effect.

Perhaps you can investigate this using the FileMon utility.

I've downloaded Process Monitor but I don't know how to interpret the
results. It's doing lots of stuff, but it all looks like legitimate
windows stuff.

I tried booting into windows safe mode by pressing F8, no networking, it
was still doing the drive polling, again even when not logged in. Also
disconnected my Microsoft USB mouse and went back to an old MS-Mouse PS/2
port. Again. no change. Unloaded the ATI drivers and booted with the
default VGA drivers. Again, no change. There's this constant blip blip
blip hard drive activity light access. No network activity.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Just a hunch: How much physical RAM do you have? If you have less than
256K RAM, XP is possibly caching to the disk excessively.

You mean "paging," not "cacheing." The two are almost exact opposites. When
you cache, you use a faster medium in place of a slower one to speed things
up. When you page, you use a slower medium (disk drive) in place of a faster
one (RAM) to make it possible to do more things, but at a *cost* in speed.

 

[Bob Adkins]

You mean "paging," not "cacheing."

Yes, of course paging is the word I was trying to think of. Thank you!

A friend had that exact problem, and I found fixed it. For the life of
me, I can't think of what it was! GRRRRRR!

I do remember it was something fairly common,,, either a Windows
service or a common 3rd party applet. Whatever it was, it surprised me
that it had such an effect.

-

Bob

 

[Blinking Seagate]

Final update on the problem. I bought a new hard disc and performed a
fresh install of XP Professional. Right from the beginning, as soon as it
did the first boot into the completed install, nothing pulled in off the
net (in fact had the ethernet cable disconnected during the install), I see
the hard disc activity light flashing once every second. It never
completely goes out. So I give up on this. It must be normal or maybe
there's something weird about my motherboard and hardware. I have an older
PIII system that doesn't seem to show this sign so it's a real stumper.....

 

[Guest]

Final update on the problem. I bought a new hard disc and performed a
fresh install of XP Professional. Right from the beginning, as soon as it
did the first boot into the completed install, nothing pulled in off the
net (in fact had the ethernet cable disconnected during the install), I see
the hard disc activity light flashing once every second. It never
completely goes out. So I give up on this. It must be normal or maybe
there's something weird about my motherboard and hardware. I have an older
PIII system that doesn't seem to show this sign so it's a real stumper.....

You are not the only one to have this problem. I just recently purchased a
new system (home built0 and I have the same problem. I had the problem before
and it was cleared up with turning off indexing service. But not this time,
as that service is not running.

I've checked everything. I've downloaded and used filemon, diskmon procmon
and digimon. The only thing I can see is that windows lsas.exe accesses the
registry everytime the HD light blinks. Its looking at the sam keys in local
machine. I've even bought a second HD, made an image of my old HD and used
the old installation. (had to reuse my old upgrade installation of XP Pro)
and I got the same result. the light still blinks.

The other thing that this machine does that just ain't right is that when my
iPod is connected directly to usb Windows has a feildday accessing it. its
like a child with ADD. Beedoop, connected, boodeep, disconnted, waits
anywhere from a few milliseconds to 30 seconds then does it all over again. I
would think that would be some sort of Virus, but I have none. I haven't been
able to figure out what is causing that. I'm sure the two are related. This
isn't a problem with the ipod services as I've turned them off and it still
does the same thing.

There must be some solution to this.


I know this is not a normal feature of XP.