Constant HD access Vista 32

[SanDiegoPC]

I am trying to figure out what's happening on a Lenovo 3000 with Vista Home Premium 32 bit. The hard disk is always actively searching for something and I have no idea what. When I run the task manager and look at services running, it will show Idle as 95 percent and Task Manager as the other 5 percent. So it's not a process I can find and kill using the task manager unfortunately.

I have deleted viruses using MalwareBytes. That got rid of a bunch of trojans. The Adaware program finds no more spyware at all and I also just did disk maintenance. I went to the Properties/Tools panel for Drive C and told it to scan and repair the HD on next startup. That was done.

Oh yea and this particualr machine had Norton 360 on it, which I suspected as causing the disk activity. I uninstalled that and the excess disk activity is still there. While no programs are running, you can hear the hard disk acting like it's doing a defrag.

Suggestions greatly apprecieated.

 

[Engineer]

Same here. Was going to post this last night. Just installed Vista 32 on a new build for my daughter. Went into her room and the HD LED was going full stream. Tried several utilities to see what it was. Turned off indexing on searches. Scanned for malware and already use Avast FREE for the virus scanner.

I too would appreciate any clues to this....

 

[Arkaign]

Windows 7 FTW? 🙂

All kidding aside, that kind of ridiculous drive thrashing usually dies out after a couple weeks of use.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Open the resource monitor (as an admin) and check under the "Disk" section for activity. This can be done by running the task manager (CTRL + SHFT + ESC) and using the button on the Performance tab or by typing "resmon" into the Start Menu. Look into anything that stands out.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

All kidding aside, that kind of ridiculous drive thrashing usually dies out after a couple weeks of use.
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No, this PC is a year old.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

Originally posted by: Rhonda the Sly
Open the resource monitor (as an admin) and check under the "Disk" section for activity. This can be done by running the task manager (CTRL + SHFT + ESC) and using the button on the Performance tab or by typing "resmon" into the Start Menu. Look into anything that stands out.

All that shows is four entries of 'system process information' and a long hex code behind each. Those are the ones using the disk.

 

[techs]

I have done a hundred Vista installs. What always happens is the hard drive cranks away for quite a while. I tracked it down to the fact it's indexing the files. Plus it makes restore points. And after you do an install you usually install a whole bunch of your software, so that adds to restore points.

I have seen it last for up to about 8 days. It depends on how much data you restore to Vista after the install, how many programs you install and the speed of your computer.

I would suggest just keeping your computer on, not in suspend mode, for as long as it takes.

You can choose to disable indexing, but then the file search works like crap.

 

[corkyg]

As Techs says, if you turn Indexing off, a lot of that activity will cease. I keep it of because I almost never search for files. I have never used the MS My Documents system. I put files in folders under the app that created them. I always know where to look without searching. So, it depends on how you work to a large degree.

 

[postmortemIA]

it is indexing and superfetch

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Originally posted by: SanDiegoPC

Originally posted by: Rhonda the Sly
Open the resource monitor (as an admin) and check under the "Disk" section for activity. This can be done by running the task manager (CTRL + SHFT + ESC) and using the button on the Performance tab or by typing "resmon" into the Start Menu. Look into anything that stands out.

All that shows is four entries of 'system process information' and a long hex code behind each. Those are the ones using the disk.

It should look like this. There shouldn't be any hex anywhere.

Depending on how many files you choose to index it really should take a little less than an hour to finish up. I have a single 500GB drive and whatever small part I index of it (I think around 200GB worth) only takes about 15 minutes to process. If there is constant indexing it could be because you're indexing files that are constantly being updated. If you indexed the Program Files folder(s) that might lead to this, depending on how active you are at your PC and what applications you use.