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VISTA is wearing out hard drive

Z

ZLK2000

Member
I powered my computer up today using an 8600GTS OC and when iam in game my hard drive is working at FULL BLAST!!!!! and wont stop!, i mean i can hear it and see the blue LED going nuts!!! even when i move a window around the screen the led is blinking like crazy!! and i hear it screaming!

What the heck is it doing?! I've never seen such a thing...

Is this normal in Vista? or has it always been like that even with XP?
 
In the Run box type in SERVICES.MSC and click OK. Scroll down to
the SUPERFETCH service, right-click on it and select Properties, then
under Startup type select DISABLED and then click apply.

Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
 
I imagine if he let it continue you HDD would only last approx. 6 months. If your lucky.
 
Originally posted by: Duddy
I imagine if he let it continue you HDD would only last approx. 6 months. If your lucky.
Click to expand...
Any basis for that, aside from... imagination?

 
Originally posted by: mechBgon
Originally posted by: Duddy
I imagine if he let it continue you HDD would only last approx. 6 months. If your lucky.
Click to expand...
Any basis for that, aside from... imagination?
Click to expand...

No, just a guess. And not good one. Maybe exaggerated.
 
ZLK2000, maybe your computer doesn't have enough RAM to keep the game mostly in RAM, in which case it would have to use the hard drive's pagefile. How much RAM do you have, and what game is it?

In any event, you can get some insight on what the HDD is doing by

1) opening Task Manager

2) going to the Performance tab and clicking the Resource Monitor button

3) looking at the Disk section and seeing what's getting disk activity. On my system, the SearchIndexer.exe is presently doing a bunch of stuff at background priority level, for example. If you widen up the File header on the chart, you can see what files it's working with in real-time.
 
I tried that, but still is doing it. this is what is happening.... I have windows XP and vista.... when i run CS:source at high everything it works in XP, i still hear my hdd working, but not as hard as in vista. Using the same settings within Vista, my drive goes nuts!!

I had 7900gt prior and it ran max settings in source and this 8600gts oc cant even get close, but I hear my hdd a lot more now. The only thing I changed out was the video card....
 
I just found something interesting.... I think the video card is stealing my computer of its memory.....

Under my device settings it says
Total available graphics memory 1022MB
dedicated video memory 256MB
System video memory 0MB
Shared System memory 766MB

any idea if it could be that its robbing my system of to much RAM?
 
Ok, now look in Resource Monitor. What's the disk activity appear to be related to, maybe the indexing? Is it causing any actual problems for you?

You could disable Indexing if you wanted to give up that Vista-specific enhancement, but if all it's doing is using your otherwise-idle CPU time and otherwise-idle disk time to index, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's what makes stuff appear insta-magically from the Start > Search box when you begin to type.
 
Well I figured out the noise isn't my HDD its the video card, making a crazy amount of noise. It literally sounds like a hard drive!!!!! I have never seen such a thing with a video card ever!!! anyway, this bad boy is hurting BAD! and i dunno what the heck is its deal....

Here is the crazy part..... It isn't the fan making the noise :-/

The computer begins to struggle when the noise is made, it makes it whenever i move the mouse around or something only when it is doing something visual, and its not coming from the hard drive, and its not the fan of the video card... but it is the video card...

For example if i open source then at this point it continues without stopping at all...but the fan remains at the same speed, and even if i run the fan at 100% it doesn't make the noise, but its coming from the card itself, I dunno i've never seen this before
 
Originally posted by: ZLK2000
Well I figured out the noise isn't my HDD its the video card, making a crazy amount of noise. It literally sounds like a hard drive!!!!! I have never seen such a thing with a video card ever!!! anyway, this bad boy is hurting BAD! and i dunno what the heck is its deal....

Here is the crazy part..... It isn't the fan making the noise :-/

The computer begins to struggle when the noise is made, it makes it whenever i move the mouse around or something only when it is doing something visual, and its not coming from the hard drive, and its not the fan of the video card... but it is the video card...

For example if i open source then at this point it continues without stopping at all...but the fan remains at the same speed, and even if i run the fan at 100% it doesn't make the noise, but its coming from the card itself, I dunno i've never seen this before
Click to expand...

I think it might be your power supply.... not enough power getting to the Video card and you are hearing the capacitors acting up.

That or something is really wrong with the video card. Back when I had an X1900XT I had a 480W power supply that didn't give enough power to the video card and got the same noises till I upgraded my PS.

 
RMA the card?

Sounds like you should just return it if you can, if your old 7900GT was faster. Why did you switch at all? For DX10? That's about the only reason I can think of. Not that it's a bad one, just a little early to do it.

If you're 100% positive it's the card making the noise you should be able to RMA it at least. Video cards shouldn't make noise unless it's the fan.

EDIT: Mrwizard has a great point. The PSU could easily be causing the video card problems. I know the 7900GT was famous for being power-efficient but I don't know how its power requirements compare to the new 8600's. You may be just over the PSU's ability.
 
Originally posted by: ZLK2000
I just found something interesting.... I think the video card is stealing my computer of its memory.....

Under my device settings it says
Total available graphics memory 1022MB
dedicated video memory 256MB
System video memory 0MB
Shared System memory 766MB

any idea if it could be that its robbing my system of to much RAM?
Click to expand...

Does your motherboard have integrated graphics? If it does, do you have it turned off?
 
My vista machine shares video memory also... it is werid... Nvidia panel says:

dedicated video memory: 256 MB
System video Memory: 0
Shared System Memory: 495MB

not sure if it is really using this memory or not though
 
Originally posted by: Duddy
I imagine if he let it continue you HDD would only last approx. 6 months. If your lucky.
Click to expand...

I have a hard time imagining that you even work with computers. Let alone be a MVP.
 
Originally posted by: Duddy
In the Run box type in SERVICES.MSC and click OK. Scroll down to
the SUPERFETCH service, right-click on it and select Properties, then
under Startup type select DISABLED and then click apply.

Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Click to expand...

Wow.

Giving someone some performance crippling advice without even gathering any information to find out what the problem is?
 
Originally posted by: ZLK2000
Well I figured out the noise isn't my HDD its the video card, making a crazy amount of noise. It literally sounds like a hard drive!!!!! I have never seen such a thing with a video card ever!!! anyway, this bad boy is hurting BAD! and i dunno what the heck is its deal....

Here is the crazy part..... It isn't the fan making the noise :-/

The computer begins to struggle when the noise is made, it makes it whenever i move the mouse around or something only when it is doing something visual, and its not coming from the hard drive, and its not the fan of the video card... but it is the video card...

For example if i open source then at this point it continues without stopping at all...but the fan remains at the same speed, and even if i run the fan at 100% it doesn't make the noise, but its coming from the card itself, I dunno i've never seen this before
Click to expand...


I have that same problem, my 7900GTX and 8800GTX exhibit the same problem, its like a buzzing or ticking sound coming from the card just beneath the fan, it's easier to differentiate on an 8800 because the fan is not sitting on top of the core so it's obvious where the noise is coming from, it' sounds like the core is going haywire, the more powerful the card the louder it is and lessor cards expreience it more often, I usually only heard it while gaming with the 8800, but with the 7900 every window transition or animaton would start the noise especially with aero running, my PC is pretty quiet so unless i have the exhaust fan in my room running it's a real pain and kind of scary. At first i thought the 8800 was defective, until i tested the 7900, then put them both in an xp machine, but it's totally a vista problem maybe bad drivers or some problem in vista.
 
Vista does run in 3d mode all the time and offloads a significant amount of work from your CPU to your GPU. This would definately be a Vista thing, not a driver thing. It's pretty much by design though.

If your cooling solution is noisy you're going to take notice pretty quick. Some higher end cards might not sweat the extra load so it won't be as noticable. If by contrast you've got a noisy CPU fan Vista isn't putting as much load there so I suppose you could see an improvement. You can flip off Aero and things might get quiet again just like in XP. Mind you things will look like XP too 😛

Vista and other software can't really cause a buzzing or ticking sound though. That sounds more like a bad fan. Check that out before "bad fan" turns into "bad gpu".
 
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