Hard disk activity every 5 seconds...?

[Jay]

Hi everyone

I have Win XP Home installed, and currently up-to-date.

I have no known viruses, trojans, worms or spyware on the system (it's only
a week or so old).

System is a Dell Dimension 2400 (2.8GHz P4, 512 RAM).

The 'problem' I have is with the HD - every five seconds or so, there is
some disk activity... 'click click' and the drive activity light
illuminates. It's definately the HD.

I can't understand what the PC is doing, or why it has to access the HD so
frequently. It may sound like a minor niggle, but the base unit is about 12
inches away from me on the desk, and the constant 'click click' is driving
me nuts!

I've tried to switch off indexing and the page file, but it still does it.

Can anyone please advise me as to what it possibly might be, and better
still - how to stop it!!??

Many thanks


Jay

 

[George Valkov]

Solutions:
plan A) Stick something non-transparent over the LED
plan B) Open the case and disconnect the LED
I usually apply plan A to the monitor's LED when I watch a movie.

More information:
Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 is logging data periodically for security
reasons. Maybe once per every 1 or 2 secouns.
You can try to disable the Event Log service:
Context menu for My Computer, Manage, Services and Applications, Services,
double click on Event Log, set Startup type to Disabled, [ok], restart
computer.
WARNING:
I haven't ever disabled the Event Log and I don't know the results. If
something goes wrong, try changing it back to Automatic Startup type.


George Valkov

 

[R. McCarty]

Download a tool from SysInternals called Filemon. It is a
real-time disk activity monitor.

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml

Also, as a general tip - Run all the SpyWare tools listed on
numerous posting in the NG.

 

[Jay]

Thanks for the info, guys.I've tried ad-aware and spybot 1.3, both found a
couple of nasties, but the HD is still doing it's thing. :-/

Used the file mon prog and these seem to be up to something:

SVCHOST.EXE
VSMON.EXE
SERVICES.EXE (Event Log it seem)
MSMSGS.EXE

The top 2 seem to be doing the most...

It said that Eveng Log cannot be stopped, so I thought I'd better leave
it... :-/

Any other ideas?

Thanks again

Jay

 

[R. McCarty]

Vsmon.Exe is a component of Zone Alarm - There are
several reports of problems with this.

To see the actual handling components of Svchost.Exe
open a Command Prompt (and type)
Tasklist /SVC

Msmsgs.Exe is Windows Messenger (IM) - If you do not
use it then to uninstall for your specific profile, put the
following into a Run box (Press Enter)
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

 

[Jay]

Many thanks.

I disabled ZoneAlarm, rebooted, and it's not that.

Thanks for telling me how to remove IM... I pasted that into the run box, it
said something nasty when it removed it, but IM seems to be gone, and my PC
seems to be running fine.

Was I supposed to paste it exactly, or replace %windir% with my windows
directory? :-S

Seems like it's a SVCHOST process that's causing all the activity.

Maybe I should shove the PC under my desk, and stick a pillow on top of it
or something! ;-)


Jay