Question about Memory managment in XP

[MrSavoy]

I notice my hard drive light on my box is always running. Now what I mean is not thrasing away like some people have reported but more of a ever so slight blink and it does this approx every second. Its a very faint blink and so I checked in the task manager and it seems the physical and kernel memory are always changing. I know xp swaps memory with the swap file alsot but, this happens no matter what I am running or not. I can sit there with nothing running or usng the cpu and still see it constantly swaping memory. Its not like 100 megs of ram is being used and given back but its changing 20-50 megs or so at a clip. This happens when nothing is is accessing the hard drives and when nothing is running in the background so cpu usage at idle is 0%, so why would thi sram be constantly changing if nothing needs more memory and could this be the reason my hard drive light is constantly and faintly blinking? I watch the light and the changes in the memory and they seem to be in sync. Thanks.

 

[Lord Evermore]

You're using a LiteOn CDRW. 🙂 There's apparently some sort of bus polling that the drive does or something, which causes the IDE channel to be activated, which makes the light blink. There's no actual activity going on.

 

[MrSavoy]

I see. Ok makes sense. But what about the fact that my memory keeps changing? Its always moving.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Type CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up task manager and look at all the processes that are running even when you aren't doing anything, it's a pretty long list.

 

[MrSavoy]

I always do that. Even when nothing is running that would/should consume memory and trade it back and forth it still moves alot. I can shut down almost everything running and still see the memory moving. This is physical memory and kernel memory we are talking about here in the task manager.

 

[Lord Evermore]

It might be System Restore, or Indexing service, or some other service that isn't actually accessing the drive. It changes constantly for me too, I never paid attention to it. Of course, total physical memory should never be changing. 🙂

 

[OverVolt]

SpyWare!!!! Maybe so, Maybe not.

But anyway use the CTLR+ALT+DEL and look at processes, and see which one's memory usage is constantly bumping around and see if it's something u can end the process for.

 

[MrSavoy]

I have tried turning off indexing servcies already didnt change it. The windows services are changing memory alot it seems. But it doesnt show them changing as much as the memory itself. Who knows.

 

[NokiaDude]

Don't worry, it's not like its going to slowly kill your hdd.