Advice: Harddrive Reading/Writing When Inactive

[mhr2x]

My main HD becomes almost constantly active as my computer becomes idle. My monitor is set to dim after 20 minutes of inactivity. When this happens, my drive starts reading/writing. This doesn't cease until I wake the computer. Additionally, windows are slow to redraw and the OS/software becomes less responsive (as if there has been some serious memory leakage).

Current setup:
Hardware: Dell (pretty much stock with extra HD), 512MB Ram, 30GB and 80 GB HD (neither are near capacity)

Soft: XP Pro SP1; Avast and Zone Alarm Pro are probably the only two memory resident program that might have an effect.

I don't believe I have virus scans or defrag set to occur when the computer is idle, but perhaps I am missing these settings.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Matt

 

[nullshark]

START -> Search, click INDEXING SERVICE. See if it's running. If it is, that's most likely the cause. It's indexing all the files on your HDD. To stop it, click on "No, Do not enable Indexing Service."

(The service catalogs files on the HDD so your searches are faster. It typically starts up when the computer is inactive but can run sometimes when you're doing things, too.)

 

[mhr2x]

Nah, indexing is disabled. Thanks for the reply.

Any other ideas?

 

[KK]

any bad sectors? My laptop was accessing the harddrive alot when the harddrive had some bad sectors.