Hard drive slowing performance

[Guest]

My hard drive seems to be having spits of constant use and it is a struggle
to work on. When I look at task manager it shows about 5% of processing power
used and this is being used by AV, Windows update etc...

How can I check what is using / making the hard drive run and slow the system?

When the hard drive light is on constant the system idle is on about 98%?????

Any ideas, thanks

 

[Parhar]

Goto to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk
Defragmenter and analyze your disk. If required do a defrag the disk.

Its possible that the OS is doing lots of hard disk thrashing for
reading/writing the pagefile. You can check this in My Computer -->
Properties. There are some steps you can take for optimizing the
pagefile usage.

-Parhar
http://www.askarya.com/tm/tm.asp
*Taskbar Manager* - Prioritize your applications on Windows taskbar

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the quick response,

I have checked the Defrag and it doesnt need doing. How can I check if the
hard disk is thrashing for reading/writing of the pagefile?

Any other ideas???

 

[Malke]

Thanks for the quick response,

I have checked the Defrag and it doesnt need doing. How can I check if the
hard disk is thrashing for reading/writing of the pagefile?

Any other ideas???

1. See if the drive is in PIO mode. MVP Hans-Georg Michna has the
explanation and fix here:

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

2. If that doesn't help, download a diagnostic utility from the hard
drive mftr.'s website. You will create either a bootable cd or floppy
with the file you download. Then boot with the media you created and do
a thorough test of the hard drive. If the drive fails any physical
tests, replace it.


Malke

 

[Guest]

The drive is running in UDMA6 mode. Not sure if I said earlier but.....

The drive doesnt do this all the time only for about say 15 minutes then its
fine for a while, then it might have another do again. Strange eh, thats why
I thought it was a program running in the background

???

 

[HeyBub]

The drive is running in UDMA6 mode. Not sure if I said earlier
but.....

The drive doesnt do this all the time only for about say 15 minutes
then its fine for a while, then it might have another do again.
Strange eh, thats why I thought it was a program running in the
background

Could be. Windows indexing service comes to mind as well as the
anti-phishing feature of IE7.

You can download Filemon from sysinternals and find out exactly what's going
on when the disk goes nuts. That might provide a clue.

 

[Guest]

"You can download Filemon from sysinternals"

Good thinking, I will give it a whirl and see if anything stands out.
Cheers

 

[Martin C]

Another thing to possibly consider is if you have MS Office installed on
your machine. If so, then it is possible that the disc thrashing is due to
the Fast Find utility that comes with Office.

Have a look here on how to get rid of it if you have it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/199787

Hope this helps.
Martin

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all the replies to my question.....

Yesterday the disk started to do it and I downloaded filemon. I just managed
to run it before the disk light stopped, it seemed to me that explorer.exe
was the main culprit but I will need to do some more investigation.

As far as other programs I have pretty much shut everything down, so I dont
know whether Office can run this fast find when not running???

 

[Tim.T]

Check the drive manufacturer and see if they have any diagnostic tools you
can download and use. Also, look for a free tool called SpeedFan. It can let
you monitor all kinds of things on your pc from fan speeds, core
temperature, and if your drive uses S.M.A.R.T technology SpeedFan uses this
to monitor drive health. Also, just get in a routine of defragging your
drive regularly.

When the hard drive light is on constant the system idle is on about

98%?????

That just means resources are 98% FREE, not used.

Tim

 

[Guest]

Right Guys

Think I have cracked it (thanks HeyBub). I have ran Filemon and basically I
think its the AV. It looks as though it is doing a full system scan,
although this doesnt show in my AV log (but thats another matter! )
Thanks for all the replies people.