Hard Drive Activity Going Berserk!! 1

[archagon]

This request is similar to this one:

http://www.tek-tips.com/gpviewthread.cfm/qid/728064/pid/779/lev2/67/lev3/70

However, I fear that my problem is different.

I have this odd problem with my computer. Every 15 minutes or so, it goes into a strange "activity period" in which my hard drive and RAM are working to their fullest (according to SiMeter my hard drive is at 100% and so is my RAM). This period goes on for about 2 minutes, after which it either stops and then restarts or just stops altogether. Then after 10 minutes it restarts again. This is also sometimes triggered by doing simple tasks, such as quitting programs, closing a game, etc. I have defragged my drive and scanned it for spyware and viruses - still nothing. After reading the thread that I've posted above, I disabled the indexing service, and so far so good, but it's only been about 10 minutes.

My question is: what was/is causing these "activity periods"? If it was the indexing service, I don't see the point of using it at all - it rendered my computer (P42.8ghz w/512MB RAM) unusable! (and strangely enough, this problem occured only recently, whereas the indexing service was enabled from the start [2 weeks ago])

 

[bcastner]

Disable the indexing service. Either through the Start, Search for files and folders, or Control Panel, Administative Tools, Services.

I suspect there is an issue that is not Indexing Services, but clean that out of the equation.

. BIOS upgrades, completely current?
. SATA drivers, completely current?
. XP Hotfixes, completely current? Including:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;331958

. "Do it Yourself Bootvis.exe" to reduce MRU thrasing of idle period disk usage? faq779-4518