Disk thrashing

[John Burnie]

I'm sorry to bring it up, I'm sure that it has been seen 1,000 times before.
When I type anything (in fact, I think that it is AS I type anything) in the
Start Menu search box, the hard disk starts thrashing, and as far as I can
tell goes on forever. The system becomes very slow for other applications. If
I put the computer to sleep, the thrashing starts again as soon as it wakes
up. It is ok if I close it down and wait a few seconds before a cold boot.

Performance Monitor shows that the active program is scvhost.exe.

I'll offer system details if that would help.

 

[AJ]

May be time to install a anti virus programme and let it have at the hard
drive, then defragment. Or maybe just Fdisk, Format, and reload your O/S to
see if the hard drive may act differently.

 

[John Burnie]

Thanks AJ.

I'm hoping to avoid reloading the OS. The anti virus program that I have is
Bullguard, which seems to do its job very well.

Since posting, I have found
http://vistarewired.com/2007/04/27/find-out-which-services-are-hogging-your-computers-resources/
which lets you find which processes are running the many instances of
svchost.exe which occur. It may help.

As of now, I'm not sure what process is started by typing in the Start -
Search box. That's the one that I aim to stop.

 

[EW]

I'm sorry to bring it up, I'm sure that it has been seen 1,000 times
before.
When I type anything (in fact, I think that it is AS I type anything) in
the
Start Menu search box, the hard disk starts thrashing, and as far as I can
tell goes on forever. The system becomes very slow for other applications.
If
I put the computer to sleep, the thrashing starts again as soon as it
wakes
up. It is ok if I close it down and wait a few seconds before a cold boot.

Performance Monitor shows that the active program is scvhost.exe.

I'll offer system details if that would help.

I'm quite certain that the disk thrashing is caused by Vista searching for
what you're typing in the search box. This would be true especially if
Indexing is turned off -- thereby Vista has to "start from scratch" to find
what you're looking for. Now, if your situation is that Vista is thrashing
more than you think it should, then turn OFF Indexing and any other
scheduled tasks such as defragmentation, virus scanning, etc. I did, and my
thrashing days are gone. Besides, if you don't do a lot of desktop
"searches" then you should be able to live with the occasional disk activity
when you do.

EW

 

[John Burnie]

Thanks EW,
I agree that Vista is searching for my search term - once started, it seems
to go on even after finding it! I have the indexing service turned off, also
defrag and automatic virus scanning of the hard disk.

I had System Restore turned off too, but I prefer to have the lifeboat
available! Vista is hard work, but now that I can look in Task Manager for
Processes and for Services I think that I can solve this...

 

[Dave]

Backup running?
Windows Defender/antispyware scan?
WMP/iTunes searching for music?
Defrag?