Computer (hdd?) working overtime! Why!?

[danielord]

Hi there!

My PC has suddenly started working overtime, all the time. It?s a little hard to describe, but the harddrive is working really hard (making that clicking sound they do when they work) almost all the time. The machine is sluggish when it?s doing that.

More info:
I have to hdd?s in, one WD 320GB (primary) and a Samsung 500GB for storage. I?ve godt the primary portioned with one XP Pro and one Vista Home Premium.
In XP I first though I?d found the problem because a Belkin Wireless-app was using a lot of CPU-cycles. I googled it and others had issues ? fixed it, and thought that was it. But then it started up again!

I?ve defragged everything with Diskeeper and run AdAware and AVG Virus scans. In Task Manager nothing is using the CPU og RAM more than it should, the damn machine just chokes at the slightest workload.

I?ve tried to see if Vista runs smoother than XP, and it might be a little better. This makes me wonder if it can be hardware related? To be honest I?m having real trouble figuring out which harddrive is making the noise, but I think it?s the system disc, the WD.

The PC has been running current format for about 1 year and 3 months, and I treat it pretty good (my old setup ran perfectly for 3+ years, no format).

The PC is a C2D E6600 clocked to 3Ghz, 2GB Ram, GeForce 7900 GTO.

Any help greatly appreciated, as I would hate to either format for nothing, or buy new hardware without needing it. I?m usually pretty savvy with computers, but this one has me stumped.

 

[NoelS]

danielord,

Sounds like something (virus, trojan, etc.) could be taking advantage of your machine (or controlling one of your HDDs). Do you have a good firewall as well as virus and anti-spam protection programs? Have you checked for trojans?

One other thing to check is your paging file. Re-check the settings and see if that could be contributing to your problem.

And welcome to the forum. I hope we can help you find your problem...

Noel

 

[Old Hippie]

Sounds like something (virus, trojan, etc.) could be taking advantage of your machine (or controlling one of your HDDs).

Could be. Or maybe just Vista doing that indexing thing?

You could try disabling that for a troubleshooting step.

 

[danielord]

Hi.
Thanks for your responses. I've run every spyware and antivirus known to man, nothing comes up. Page file is fine, on a seperate hdd than XP and it's big enough and not fragmented.

I've also checked I/O activity to the drives, to see if anything was going nuts - didn't seem so.

Indexing turned off.

In the mean time I have succeeded in minimizing the problem. I emptied the "prefetch" folder in the XP folder (which I'm aware is a no-no most of the time) and that actually seems to have helped somewhat. I've also cleared up alot of space on the 500Gb drive, I'm wondering if XP has issues with large drives or something? As I said this really has me stumped! But it's not gone...


And thanks for the welcome, one always lurks until the day one need help ;-)

 

[olmer]

Check your scheduled tasks first.

 

[bwatson283]

You can set the page file to clear on restart, if you feel like modifying the local group policy.

 

[Tenet]

It sounds like you haven't isolated which drive it is yet.
You can disconnect the data drive for awhile and see if it still happens.

 

[danielord]

It still happens if I disconnect the storage drive, but to a lesser extent (I know, sounds odd). Wish I could describe it better... I sense I'm going towards a format or maybe a replacement disc and a clone.

 

[Tenet]

First try running the diagnostics from the hdd mfr. You can download them from the mfr websites.

Also make sure the drive transfer mode is DMA (not PIO). You can check this in the properties for the drive controller in Device Manager.

 

[danielord]

Ran WD-diag. tool, all passes fine.

As far as I can tell all the controllers are set to "DMA if available", or something like that.

Could it somehow be some other hardware acting up? RAM maybe?

What puzzles me is that the damn thing sounds like (and acts like) it working really hard, but no processes or anything should up like that. CPU usage is fine, memory usage etc...

Maybe this is just one of Windows' maybe foibles that cannot be explained. Maybe it's time to fully switch to Vista. I just hate how my home theatre works through that, no hotkeys to switch display and can't get 5.1 DD og DTS to work right. Mind, has been a while since I've tried.

 

[Tenet]

Does the problem only happen when Windows is loaded up? What about safe mode? Or at the BIOS screen?

I would cancel the overclock for now and reset the BIOS. First record your current settings for future reference.

 

[danielord]

I ran Vista on the other partition (same drive) for an extensive periode yesterday, and the same problem occurs there when at the slightest workload. I have yet to try safe mode, and don't think there is any problem at the bios screen (only happens when doing stuff in the OS'es). I'll try to cancel the clock and then memtest.

Thanks again for the help, it really is appreciated. I know it's a fuss coming back to the same post ;-)