Hard Drive keeps being accessed 1

[Righty]

I am running Win XP home on a computer. Win XP Home was just completely re-installed. There is 512 Mg and a 60 gig hard drive with 55 gigs open. The hard drive keeps spinning as if something is accessing it. I checked the processes and the only thing running is the "System Idle Process" at 98%. There is almost nothing left in the start up tray. Any ideas what could be making the hard drive constantly spin?

 

[IloveCheese]

Try Chkdsk and Disk Defragmenter.

 

[bcastner]

. background idle process (see: faq779-4518 )
. S.M.A.R.T. status update
. XP disk indexing service

 

[Righty]

I ran Rundll32,exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks but the hard drive light keeps flashing. Cannot find the other two items in the setup.

 

[bcastner]

I apologize, as I was trying to explain things that happen "in the background" that involve hard disk activity, not attempting any way you can control this.

To restate things, most of what is happening is "normal", and my original post suggested various reasons why.

What I forgot to include is any antivirus software, as it too often uses idle processor time to do a scan of the hard disk.

Bottom line, what you are seeing is likely normal housekeeping, and ignore it.

 

[Righty]

I did re-installed from the recovery partition and before doing anything else the LED started flickering again with the hard drive grinding away. I installed Norton Systemworks and ran Speed disk then Disk doctor and it didn't help. So I will take your word and just hope that it will eventually stop at some point in time. If you come up with any other suggestions, please let me know.

 

[bcastner]

I promise to do so, but some of what you see for hard disk activity is normal.

Best wishes,
Bill Castner

 

[linney]

This thread talks about some log that was being written to the hard drive incessantly.

Hard Drive Space Monster
thread779-832784

 

[Righty]

Just to clarify, I shouild have said that the hard drive light is on about 80-90% of the time.

 

[linney]

How is it in Safe Mode?

 

[Righty]

The light is always on and the hard drive is constantly spinning in Safe Mode.

 

[linney]

I wonder if it is connected correctly, or not just faulty in some way?

310353 - How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310353&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

316434 - HOW TO: Perform Advanced Clean-Boot Troubleshooting in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316434&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

310560 - How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310560&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Removing adware & spyware
faq608-4650

Post the running processes and startup items from the Hi-jack This log, maybe somebody will recognize something.