Constant HD Access from lsass and csrss

[slunk]

I just installed a new hard drive in my laptop and took the opportunity to reinstall XP SP2 and all. Unlike my last install, the hard drive is continuously accessed by lsass.exe and csrss.exe. I have found many similar situations on various web sites but no effective solutions. I have disabled the indexing service on both partitions and have turned off system restore, but neither has affected the issue.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? It is quite annoying and must affect performance in some way or another.

thanks,
collin

 

[slunk]

anyone?

 

[MrChad]

These files only exist in \WINDOWS\system32, right? They're not running from another location, are they?

 

[slunk]

yes, they are running from the system32 directory.

 

[singh]

http://www.sysinternals.com/

Use filemon/diskmon to see exactly what they're doing.

 

[stash]

lsass pegging on a workstation is almost always some kind of malware.

 

[slunk]

Filemon basically points to a few running apps, including thunderbird, firefox, ms anti-spyware, avg, ad-watch, vpn client and zone alarm. All of the virus and spyware tests come up negative.