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Any way to find out what keeps accessing my HDD???

The Sauce

The Sauce

Diamond Member
As I sit here using the computah i notice about once every 5 minutes the hdd gets accessed for about 30-60 seconds. I have no scheduled tasks, no antivirus software running...HDD just thrashes around on its own. Running WinXP. Any way to track which processes are accessing the HDD at any given time?
 
Open windows task manager, and click on the processes tab. Then see which process is using cpu time when the hd is being accessed.

WebDude😎
 
Snatchface, WindowsXP does 1 or 2 things that causes the harddrive to thrash for no reason. One is system restore. You can disable this. The other thing it does is move frequently used files to the outer edges of the disc for faster access. WindowsXP is using your HDD, not another program.
 
Sometimes its spyware... get a program called port detective (i think thats the name). It should tell you what ports are open and what is being sent etc etc..

Then try and get an anti-trojan program. Last time my hard drive was being accessed at random times I had a really ugly trojan horse.
When you do the ctrl+alt+tab thingy.. there may be processes that are legit. So hit the web to find out what each one does. Or post what is running in the background here and Ill try and help.
 
Opening MS-DOS and typing 'netstat -a' shows open ports, by the way, you don't need a program for it.
 
Great suggestions guys, I'll try them out when I get back from work tonight. Probably not spyware or trojans though cause I antivirus/anti-spyware fairly frequently.
 
I don't suggest turning of System Restore. When you need it it turns out to be one of the best features of WinXP.

- Collin
 


<< I don't suggest turning of System Restore. When you need it it turns out to be one of the best features of WinXP. >>


I think it's the biggest space-waster in the history of mankind! Yes, I realize you can configure it to "waste" less space. However I like to take the responsibilty myself and do regular backups with Norton Ghost. But to each his own! 😉

I do have a WinXP system that thrashes once in a while. I figured that it was probably the system sizing the swapfile back down (it's not a fixed size because it's not my main system) or doing some other regular maintenance. Of course, as I typed this, I realized that it's running RC-5 :Q
 
I just love big drives and wasting space on big drives! That's what they're for! 😛

I tested the daylights out of a couple of sandbox systems running WinXP. I never ran across any non-hardware issue that System Restore couldn't fix. That's why I like it. Makes supporting systems a lot easier. It's a lot easier to tell somebody to hit F8 and get into Safe Mode to use System Restore than it is to try to talk them through the use of Recovery Console and the manual restoration of old copies of the registry hives -- if they happen to have any. I guess I'm just getting old.

- Collin
 
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