Excessive HD activity when user is inactive

A

asperamanca

Dell Precision 390
Windows XP SP3 + newest security patches

INDEXING SERVICES DISABLED!

Sometimes, after about 15 minutes of user inactivity, the hard drive
would start to work like a buzzsaw. As soon as you move the mouse, the
activity stops, which makes the source of the problem tricky to
identify.

Ideas?
More info needed, and if so, what?
 
L

Leroy

Windows XP will perform a defrag while the computer is idle.
Absolutely nothing to be concerned with.
 
S

SC Tom

Dell Precision 390
Windows XP SP3 + newest security patches

INDEXING SERVICES DISABLED!

Sometimes, after about 15 minutes of user inactivity, the hard drive
would start to work like a buzzsaw. As soon as you move the mouse, the
activity stops, which makes the source of the problem tricky to
identify.

Ideas?
More info needed, and if so, what?

It's probably your virus/malware scanner working in the background. Most are
set to run after x minutes of inactivity.

SC Tom
 
A

asperamanca

Windows XP will perform a defrag while the computer is idle.
Absolutely nothing to be concerned with.

Ha. I am mostly concerned with my ears. It's a colleague's computer,
and sometimes he's not in the office for a while.
 
A

asperamanca

Do you have Anti-Virus software that does
a "Background" scan during idle periods?

McAfee VirusScan Enterprise. No Background scan I am aware of - just
on-access scanning.
 
J

JS

You need to find and identify the specific process or application that's
runs every few minutes.You can do this with Windows Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del key), select the Processes Tab,
Next, click on the CPU column twice, this should bring the System Idle
process to the top (as long as you are not using any other applications).
Then about every few seconds you should see another process
(the one that's slowing down your PC) float to or near the top of the list.

For more exploratory and detailed look, download and try Process Explorer:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Once you have Process Explorer installed and running:
In the taskbar menu select View and check 'Show Process Tree'
and 'Show Lower Pane' options.
(This will provide the detailed info you need)

Next click on the CPU column to sort processes by %CPU usage.
Every few seconds you should see another process (the one that's slowing
down your PC) float to or near the top of the list.

Now quickly click (before it drops back down the list) on the process
of interest that's listed in the CPU % column.
An alternate method of identifying the process causing the CPU usage
to spike is to double click on the Graph just below the Menu bar.
This will open the 'System Information' window, which has a larger
display of all three graphs. Now move your mouse over any spike in the
CPU Usage graph to see what process/application or service is the
cause of the spike.

Notes:
1) Some entries like Explorer and svchost may need to be expanded
to show the detail, (sub processes), in this case click on the + located
to the left of the entry.

2) Once you select/highlight a process, right click and from the
options listed select the: 'Search Online' option.
This should display what out there on the web about that process.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


Do you have Anti-Virus software that does
a "Background" scan during idle periods?

McAfee VirusScan Enterprise. No Background scan I am aware of - just
on-access scanning.
 
S

shakey

Malware.

See Task Manager: What process is using the CPU?

By the time the Task manager is visible, it's all quiet again.

I believe the options for Task Manager allow it to remain on top.
SG
 
R

Ron Badour

That being the case, put the PC in standby mode and see if that pleases your
ears :)

--
Regards

Ron Badour
MS MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


Windows XP will perform a defrag while the computer is idle.
Absolutely nothing to be concerned with.

Ha. I am mostly concerned with my ears. It's a colleague's computer,
and sometimes he's not in the office for a while.
 
A

asperamanca

That being the case, put the PC in standby mode and see if that pleases your
ears :)

That's a bit of a touchy subject, it being a colleague's PC, and not
my own.
To keep the task manager visible after such long time, I would need to
turn off the auto-locking feature which is automatically enabled as
per company policy. I know a registry hack to bypass that, but it's
frowned upon by the IT department.

However, I might have more luck with the performance monitor
(perfmon).

Will check Office version tomorrow and get back to you.
Thanks for your replies so far!
 

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