tracking down weird explorer.exe and frantic HD use?

[LRW]

I was working this morning, and things became sluggish on my WinXP
(Home).
I paid attention to the HD, and it was chirping and clicking and
working like a madman. Constantly. Non-stop for about 10 or 15
minutes. The HD light was constantly on with no flicker.

I looked at my task manager, and 2nd to System Idle Process in CPU
usage was "explorer.exe." It was constantly flitting around between 20
and 90% and the Mem usage around 38 MB.

The only applications I had open at the time was EditPlus (a notepad
substitute), Putty (an SSH terminal app), and Avant (IE
substitute/skin). I have a defrag program, but it's set to run at
nights. No other unusual TSR running in the background (that I know
of.)
Except AVG anti-virus (which always pops up a window when it's doing a
scan...at night,) and Spybot Search/Destroy.

I'm writting this after it stopped going nutso, but now it's started
again.
Is there some way to track or monitor excessive HD usage and what's
going on during it?
What in the world could explorer.exe be doing to use the HD like that?

Any suggestions on how to examine this more closely and get some
answers for myself?

Thanks!
Liam

 

[ASP.Confused]

There's a good program called FileMon that may help you:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml

Also, XP's defragmenting program runs automatically (haven't found a way to
turn it off.) This may be what's happening.

 

[LRW]

There's a good program called FileMon that may help you:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml

Also, XP's defragmenting program runs automatically (haven't found a way to
turn it off.) This may be what's happening.

Holy Hanna! That program rocks! With it I found two different programs
using my HD constantly that I should have long ago removed. Like a
Dilbert screensaver I don't even use. Why it was constantly accessing
my HD? I do not know. But out it goes!
Some great apps on that site. Thanks for the tip!
Liam