constant hard drive activity: Win XP

[bugsysiegel]

Hi all,

I have an issue with Windows XP constantly hitting my primary hard drive. It'll cause activity for about half a second, just long enough for the IDE light to come on and to hear the heads move, then stop. It repeats this cycle pretty much in a constant cycle. I've tried going through MSCONFIG and disabling all non-essential services, also tried stopping all non-essential services in the Task Manager, problem still happens. I've installed this version of XP before on this machine with no issues, but I recently upgraded the motherboard and CPU and did a fresh install of the OS, and that's when it got funky.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Bugsy

 

[sak]

Hey i dont know if this is the answer...

But i would surely install WinXP over again if u have changed the motherboard(unless u have the same Mobo). there are just to many things that might be different.

that might be it...but not sure...

 

[bugsysiegel]

Did a fresh install of the OS after I installed the new board and cpu.

 

[Gomce]

Stop "File indexing service"

uninstall Norton Systemworks if you have it...buggy thing, spots the files so it can use it later for it's Speed Disk program..

hope it helps.

 

[bugsysiegel]

Already stopped indexing service, no luck. Thanks though!

 

[GrumpyMan]

Could be system restore.

 

[Gomce]

I had the same problem when I was using my IBM 75gxp 30gb drive...

 

[bugsysiegel]

System restore is disabled, good call though. this is bugging the heck out of me. :|

 

[freebsddude]

Does the task manager show which, if any, process is talking up memory or CPU, you could click at the top to sort the CPU or memory utilization and see if any specific process(es) are hogging your system ?

 

[bil]

In task manager under the process list, enable the columns for IO Read and IO Write activity. Then you can monitor in realtime which processes are writing to the disk.

-Bill

 

[NogginBoink]

Is this really a problem? I mean, is it causing you to lose data (or sleep)?

Seems to me that if it's not causing any harm, just chalk it up to "that's the way XP works."

(There have already been several threads on this topic, with just that conclusion.)

 

[Dreadogg]

DMA enabled?

 

[bugsysiegel]

<< Is this really a problem? I mean, is it causing you to lose data (or sleep)?

Seems to me that if it's not causing any harm, just chalk it up to "that's the way XP works."

(There have already been several threads on this topic, with just that conclusion.) >>




Chalking it up to XP is not an option, the hard drive can't run constantly forever, it'll burn up even faster than it normally would!

Task monitor shows only "system idle processes" taking up cpu time.