what is my computer doing?

Ready

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2003
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If I leave my computer on long enough, the hard drive starts going crazy. There's not virus, spyware, or anything else running at least nothing that I'm aware of. The hard drive lights just blink and I can hear it writing away at I dont' know what. I'm using Win2K. Does this happen to anyone else?
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
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It's just Windows uploading all of your usage information to the mother ship ;)

It's probably just garbage collection. Or, do you have the Indexing service running?
 

ufs

Senior member
Jun 3, 2001
310
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maybe its trying to hybernate or standby. Check your power management settings.
 

Ready

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2003
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huh?
What happens all the time is that I go play warcraft. Then after I'm done and go back to windows, the hard drive just starts going off and it's annoying because it slows everything down. This usually last about an entire minute or more. If I reboot the computer before it's done, it just starts over once the computer restarts. I'm wondering which of these processes I can shut down

System Idel Process
System
smss.exe
winlogon.exe
csrss.exe
services.exe
lass.exe
regsvc.exe
svchost.exe
SPOOLSV.exe
ALERTSVC.ECE
cisvc.exe
svchost.exe
NOSSVC.EXE
nvsvc32.exe
mstask.exe
tcpsvc.exe
slserv.exe
winmgmt.exe
cidaemon.exe
mspmspsv.exe
explorer.exe
NAVAPW32.EXE
POPROXY.EXE
NAVAPSVC.EXE
IEXPLORE.EXE
taskmgr.exe

is Win2K a little bloated here?
 

fr

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
6,408
2
81
Pay attention to which of those processes is using up the CPU time.
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
0
Well, it's most likely just Windows doing some cleanup/garbage collection. Dumping the Warcraft info out of the swap file ?
 

Ready

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2003
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whats a swap file? I notice that file takes up a large chunk of space like a few hundred megs.
 

notfred

Lifer
Feb 12, 2001
38,241
4
0
Originally posted by: Ready
whats a swap file? I notice that file takes up a large chunk of space like a few hundred megs.

It where windows keeps programs that are runing when it runs out of memory, and stuff like that.
 

Ready

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2003
1,830
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pagefile.sys

is that what the swap file is call under Win2K?
it takes up an obsurd amount of space, 768 MB
 

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,938
6
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Do you have indexing service enabled? Go onto the search -> for files and folders, and check on the left if indexing service is enabled, I think that crunches your HDD sometimes to index the files.
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
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Originally posted by: Ready
pagefile.sys

is that what the swap file is call under Win2K?
it takes up an obsurd amount of space, 768 MB

It's typically RAM + 64MB (I think).

Mine's about 480MB max to 640MB and my laptop has 320MB RAM
 

Ready

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2003
1,830
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Originally posted by: conjur
Originally posted by: Ready
pagefile.sys

is that what the swap file is call under Win2K?
it takes up an obsurd amount of space, 768 MB

It's typically RAM + 64MB (I think).

Mine's about 480MB max to 640MB and my laptop has 320MB RAM

that just sucks. I only have 30 gigs of HD space and that swap file is sure sucking up a whole lot of it. I have 512 MB of ram.

 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
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Well...if you manually adjust the swap file size down to almost nothing, one, you'll get pop-up messages and, two, you'll see reduced performance.

.5GB out of 30GB isn't much to worry about.
 

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
9,448
1
76
If you have W2K, just open up your task manager, ctrl-alt-del, then look at the performance tab, it will show you how much CPU and Memory use you have at any given time. You can also go into computer management and set up even more variables to watch if you want to.



EDIT: I see you only have 24 or so posts at the time of this thread, this should be posted in the "Tech Support" forum next time. ;)