Vist Hard Drive Activity

[Alan]

Hi,
I've used all versions of Windows for many years. Since buying a new machine
withe Vista installed I have one complaint with it.
The hard drive seems to never stop. I can turn on the machine from cold and
just do literally nothing at all and the hard drive will still be rattling
away 45 minutes later.
I've been on to Hewlet Packard and got no joy from them.
Is it index system on Vista constantly updating? It's really getting on my
nerves listening to it. There can't be any reason why the HD needs to be
operating virtually all the time like this,
Any ideas?
In hope,
Alan.

 

[Dave]

I don't notice this, because I leave my desktop on all the time, so it gets
to do the grunt work (indexing, virus scanning, etc.) during the night when
I'm not using it.

 

[DP]

Is it index system on Vista constantly updating?
Yes.

There can't be any reason why the HD needs to be operating virtually all
the time like this,

Yes, there is. See above.

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM]

Hi,
I've used all versions of Windows for many years. Since buying a new
machine withe Vista installed I have one complaint with it.
The hard drive seems to never stop. I can turn on the machine from cold
and just do literally nothing at all and the hard drive will still be
rattling away 45 minutes later.
I've been on to Hewlet Packard and got no joy from them.
Is it index system on Vista constantly updating? It's really getting on my
nerves listening to it. There can't be any reason why the HD needs to be
operating virtually all the time like this,
Any ideas?
In hope,
Alan.

If it's a new machine it's probably still indexing the files for faster
searching.

 

[Steve Thackery]

Chill, it's just doing it's thing. Indexing mostly, but also Superfetch,
startup optimisation and defragging at various times.

It'll get much better after a week or so when everything has settled down.
Meanwhile, the indexing runs at the lowest I/O and CPU priorities, so
shouldn't slow down your work.

Steve

 

[Guest]

And if it is not a new machine? I have the same experience and I have been
running mine for a month or more. I see constant spikes in CPU usage usually
associated with a display program but when I stop the process it continues to
run and locks up when I play movies. 3Ghz dualcore AMD.
I know Vista is great but do you have any REAL answers that might help a
person not wanting to spend all day in chat rooms to figure out if his HP is
a dog or is Vista the problem. Could it be Defender? I have Norton so I
shut Defender down and it seemed to help with the DVDs locking up. And now
it is not so irritating.
Soorry for going on so but it ahs been a month now and my old Pentium 3 with
Windows ME was better.

 

[Alan]

Thanks to all of you for the replies.
It's not a new machine, I've had it since March.
I don't want to leave the machine running twenty-four hours a day.
Why does it take up to three hours for the HD to stop running furiously
every time I start it up?
Surely the indexing system doesn't start from scratch every time you switch
it on, or does it?
I can be sitting in the next room watching the TV and suddenly I hear the HD
roaring away like it was doing a virus scan. This is with nothing at all
open or running, just the desktop showing.
Something must be running in the background.
I've been give a complete blank from the shop I bought it from.
Can anyone give me any advice as to what this could be?
I can supply screenshots of the performance monitor etc if necessary,
Still in hope, Alan.

 

[Communikator]

Try to look at your "defragmented by Vista" drive with, let's say, Windows
2000's Defragmenter. You'll understand that the red lines that dominate the
image represent your defragmented files. And why we aren't shown any
imagistic progress of what's being done to our files while defragmenting,
also.

 

[Guest]

Seriously foks my machine has been running now for almost an hour. By the
way why all the updates. I seem to get one or two a day?

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM]

Seriously foks my machine has been running now for almost an hour. By the
way why all the updates. I seem to get one or two a day?

Windows Defender updates quite often.

 

[Guest]

I turn Windows Defender off so seriously how do I get this thing to stop
running all the time. I can't help but think it is going to wear out.

 

[Juan I. Cahis]

Yes, but the problem is that if you use Vista in a Notebook, and you
do a lot of presentations to customers in different locations daily,
with a lot of hibernate-resume processes (or shutdown-restart ones),
you cannot wait ten to twenty minutes after each resume or restart
process until Vista finish to do tasks that they are disturbing to you
in these situations. You have little control on that, starting about
how to know what hell is Vista doing with that lot of background
activity.

Definitively, Vista is a lot less productive for a road runner
Notebook user than XP.

I don't notice this, because I leave my desktop on all the time, so it gets
to do the grunt work (indexing, virus scanning, etc.) during the night when
I'm not using it.

Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)
Note: Please forgive me for my bad English, I am trying to improve it!

 

[Juan I. Cahis]

Thanks a lot Steph. I understand the Windows Indexing and Windows
Update features, but what will I loose if I disable Superfetch? Can
Superfetch and Windows Indexing be allowed to run in a certain hour
interval only, for example during night?

Try turning all that stuff off. Go to the Control Panel\Administrative
Tools\Services and turn off Superfetch,Windows Indexing, and Windows
Update. I got my hard drive down to a quick blink every 2 sec rather
then a long blink for half a sec every sec.

Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)
Note: Please forgive me for my bad English, I am trying to improve it!

 

[Charlie Tame]

Try turning all that stuff off. Go to the Control Panel\Administrative
Tools\Services and turn off Superfetch,Windows Indexing, and Windows
Update. I got my hard drive down to a quick blink every 2 sec rather
then a long blink for half a sec every sec.

Not read the thread but also my computer, right click on a drive and go
to properties. Uncheck "Index this drive" etc. This apparently is not
the same as turning windows indexing off.

 

[Johnny]

I turn Windows Defender off so seriously how do I get this thing to stop
running all the time. I can't help but think it is going to wear out.

2Gb of RAM really helps and get a Core2 DUO or Athon 64x2 proc. I
finally have a system that runs good but the hardware specs are out of
sight.

 

[Guest]

Steve, I have the same thing on my Vista Home Prem. machine. It should slow
down after a week or so but mine is a month old and still does it. Your right
it does not affect sys prefromance and I don't have a problem with putting a
new primary drive every 6 months even. It's the hassle you have after
replacing the drive getting Vista re-activated that gets me PO'ed.

-Sid

 

[Guest]

Frank, I too have the same problem with the HD activity is just too much at
IDLE.
I know that low sys. res. can casue this but like some of the other posts
here I'm running a Gigabyte Mobo AMD 4400+ w/ 4gb RAM SATA HD ....basically
the fastest machine I have had since DOS 3.0. I cut the indexing service off
and it slowed it down. I know that sometimes the size of the system.dat file
on sys in the past would get so large that it looked as if it would cause
that problem but this is just too much.
I can live with the HD replacement every once in a while, it's just the
Hassle of re-activating the OS. I have an OEM version of Vista Home Prem. and
with OEM you get no support, phone support that is.
Any other suggestions?
Sid
"The force be with you"

 

[Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM]

How old is the machine? Could it be defragging in the background?

 

[Vista User]

Steve, I have the same thing on my Vista Home Prem. machine. It should
slow
down after a week or so but mine is a month old and still does it. Your
right
it does not affect sys prefromance and I don't have a problem with putting
a
new primary drive every 6 months even. It's the hassle you have after
replacing the drive getting Vista re-activated that gets me PO'ed.

Why would you have to replace your disk every 6 months?

 

[Sammy]

For those who are getting this usually high hard drive activity I feel your
pain.

I own a brand new HP Pavillion Laptop DV6000 series and getting this same
thing. Its annoying, and I dont agree with the fact that it is speeding up
the system. In fact, it slows the whole system right down.

With the HDD constantly loading in the background, these are many bad things
about it:

1. Fan is constantly on.
2. system responsiveness is slow.
3. Long waiting time during boot up.
4. Unusable desktop for a few min after reboot.
5. Hot laptop all the time due to constant hard drive activities.

Please someone provide us with a solution....

Sammy