Hard drive light flickers continuously.

[John Corliss]

No, I have a P4 1.9GHz. It's roughly the same time era as my friends AMD
1600+.

I have considered the notion that this may be a problem unique to AMDs
from that group.

 

[rod]

"John Corliss"

Definitely sounds like a driver issue. Have you tried contacting Epson
support or updating your drivers?
OTOH, it could be a USB 2.0 issue.
John Corliss

Cheers John,
the model is "out of support" so that's why
I am prepared to put up with the irritation until I buy a new scanner.
(not an Epson as you may imagine)
Hope you get a solution

 

[rod]

"Jack Mc Kenna"

Right click your HD icon, click properties, at the bottom of the page
there is a box that allows the indexing service to run continuously.
Uncheck this box.

Wow! I thought you had the answer there
I disabled indexing service on the HDD
no difference still clicks and reads incessantly whilst in scan idle.

Do I need to disable indexing on folders?

does disabling indexing cause any issues you know of?

Thanks
Rod.

 

[John Corliss]

"Jack Mc Kenna"

Wow! I thought you had the answer there
I disabled indexing service on the HDD
no difference still clicks and reads incessantly whilst in scan idle.

Do I need to disable indexing on folders?

does disabling indexing cause any issues you know of?

Rod, disabling indexing can only speed up your computer. Maybe it will
allow you to search for file faster, but I turned it off when I first
set up my computer and I can still find files very easily.

As for disabling it causing any system problems, I can say from
experience "no, it won't".

 

[John Corliss]

"John Corliss"

Cheers John,
the model is "out of support" so that's why
I am prepared to put up with the irritation until I buy a new scanner.
(not an Epson as you may imagine)
Hope you get a solution

Well, from what I understand what you actually own is a "Seiko Epson"
scanner, so using other software is out of the question and you must be
referring to the drivers.

I have an old Microtek E6 scanner with a transparancy adapter. When I
installed XP, the recommended twain drivers for it sucked so badly that
in desperation, I tried the version I had been using with Millennium
Edition. To my surprise, the older version worked perfectly! I've since
replaced the scanner with a Canon Canoscan 8400F and now even THAT
scanner is dated.

<rant>
If the hardware and software industries had their way, we'd be replacing
all of our software and hardware every second. Or more likely, they'd
like us to just skip the intervening steps and hand over our bank
accounts to them directly.

I *still* use an old HP 855C printer with my computer. Old timers may
remember that this was the very first printer that was actually capable
of putting out decent color images. I spent enough money on this printer
to be able to have bought myself a new refrigerator! I'll be DARNED if
I'm not going to get my money's worth out of it, even if HP and
Microsoft conspired to create a substandard XP driver for it.
</rant>

As for your problem, have you tried installing the latest drivers for it?

http://tinyurl.com/33y79

 

[rod]

"John Corliss"

As for your problem, have you tried installing the latest drivers for it?
http://tinyurl.com/33y79
John Corliss

I have it in my "software downloads" date 23/11/2007
that's probably when I installed it.
I was new to XP then, and I am not sure if I disengaged
my AVG free AV
I might uninstall and give it a further install without my AVG present
to see if that helps.

Thanks for your comments John.

 

[John Corliss]

First of all, if this is the wrong group, please point me in the right
direction.

Now on to the problem:

I just put a new ASRock K7VT4A PRO motherboard in a friend's computer
(512 MB, AMD Athlon XP 1600+ CPU, Western Digital WD400BB-00DEA0 model
40 GB HD) and installed XP Home on it. Then I updated the OS to SP2 and
installed all critical updates possible.

At some point, I noticed that the hard drive light flickers about every
second. Not only that, but the activity happens if I boot to Safe Mode.
It doesn't do it while I'm in the BIOS though.

AAARRRGHHH!

Other than the continual flickering of the light, the computer runs
okay, but *MY* computer is running the same OS and the hard drive light
doesn't flicker unless it's doing something.

Here's what I've done to try to stop the hard drive light activity in my
friend's computer:

I've turned off all tasks and file indexing, made no difference.

I don't have MS Office installed on it.

After configuring the Task Manager's "Processes" tab to show all I/O
reads and writes, I looked to see what's causing it but it didn't show
anything. Sysinternal's Process Monitor doesn't show anything going on
either.

I turned of Auto-Insert Notification, but it didn't stop light from
flashing.

I checked for rootkits, but found none (not that the computer should be
infected, what with a fresh install and all.)

I've probably done a few other things which I'm forgetting too.

I've killed all unneeded services but it didn't do any good.

Does anybody have any other ideas as to what's causing this? I'm
snatching myself bald with this problem!

NOTE: Please don't tell me that it's normal or acceptable, and to put up
with it or suggest putting electrical tape over the light. I'm sorry,
but I will ignore any such replies because IMO the hard drive light
flickering can also be a sign of malware activity (although not in this
case). Because of this, it's a good idea to have nothing non-malware
related causing it to flicker all the time when the computer is idle.

TIA.

Okay, so here's what I did this morning. I removed the hard drive, put
in my spare and did a fresh install of the OS on it (complete with
wiping partitions and setting up new ones like on the other one, two
partitions.) Then I jumpered the multiplier settings on the motherboard
manually.

The computer's hard drive light flashes exactly the same as it did with
the other hard drive, so no, it's not a rootkit or any other kind of
malware since I haven't been online with the computer yet. I've turned
off file indexing, yada yada yada. No change.

IMO, it's got to be MB driver related. What a PITA. Other than this
flashing HD LED, the new motherboard (an ASRock) works perfectly and is
very fast as well as feature laden (six USB 2.0 ports on the back alone!)

Since I've finished snatching myself bald the day before yesterday, I
believe I will start plucking my eyebrows.

I say again, "AARRRGH!"

 

[rod]

"John Corliss"

Since I've finished snatching myself bald the day before yesterday, I
believe I will start plucking my eyebrows.

Why damage your countenance John?
start with your armpits

 

[John Corliss]

"John Corliss"

Why damage your countenance John?
start with your armpits

aaaaaaOOOWW! Yep, doesn't show.

I called my friend and told him that the blinking light is just
something he'll have to live with. He says it's no big deal, so I'll
just leave it there.

Still, I hate not understanding things like this.