Continuous Hard Disk Activity

[Frank E. Conti]

I am running XP Professional on a P4. The hard disk drive LED flashes every
few seconds as long as the machine is on, even if there is no application
running. I assume that this is some form of system related task(s), but I
can't seem to track it down. I am sure that I am not the first person to
notice this. Any suggestions?
Thanks.

 

[C.S.]

I am running XP Professional on a P4. The hard disk drive LED flashes every
few seconds as long as the machine is on, even if there is no application
running. I assume that this is some form of system related task(s), but I
can't seem to track it down. I am sure that I am not the first person to
notice this. Any suggestions?
Thanks.

If you have Office installed, it is probably the fast searching feature
(find fast feature in older versions of Office) which uses the Indexing
Service in Office XP to create a catalog of Office files on your
computer's hard disk. You can disable this easily. I have the fast
searching disabled on my computers and don't miss it.

From the Microsoft website, knowledge base item #282106:

Just turn off the Indexing Service by:

1. Start an Office XP program such as Word
2. On the File menu, click Search.
3. Under Other Search Options, under Fast searching is enabled,
click Search options.

NOTE: If Fast searching is enabled does not appear, fast
searching is not installed.

* To turn off the Indexing Service and leave the catalog files
intact, click No, do not enable Indexing Service, and then click OK.

-or- * To turn off the Indexing Service and delete the catalog
files, click Advanced, click Delete, and then click Yes.

NOTE: In Windows 2000, Delete appears on the Action menu. Select
the catalog and then click Delete.

You can also uninstall the feature - go to the knowledge base for more info:
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/Q282/1/06.asp&NoWebContent=1

 

[Chuck]

If you have Office installed, it is probably the fast searching feature
(find fast feature in older versions of Office) which uses the Indexing
Service in Office XP to create a catalog of Office files on your
computer's hard disk. You can disable this easily. I have the fast
searching disabled on my computers and don't miss it.

Frank,

If it isn't Office or anything identifiable, see what's running when
this happens. Windows Task Manager is useless here. Get Process
Explorer (free) from http://www.sysinternals.com - you can see all the
processes / services running, what modules are in them, and who
distributed each module.

You might want to check for malware first. SWI Forums is a good place
to start for advice. Get Spybot S&D and HijackThis - both free too.
Start here:
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=5187

You should have malware protection anyway. For everybody's sake.

Cheers,

Chuck
I hate spam - PLEASE get rid of the spam before emailing me!
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I am running XP Professional on a P4. The hard disk drive LED flashes every
few seconds as long as the machine is on, even if there is no application
running.

That light really means 'Activity on the IDE controller', not
specifically on the hard drive, and is the CD auto-insert check looking
to see if you have changed the disk in the CD drive

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Other things that might cause this:

Microsoft's XP indexing
Microsoft's Office Fast Find feature
Any anti-virus programs (??)
File sharing (local network and/or peer-to-peer)

Y.