Hard drive runs almost constantly

[damian5000]

Please read entirely. I've already tried a few different things to try and figure out the issue. I THINK the problem is not enough RAM, but not sure. Mulled it being a crappy motherboard or hard drive, but now don't believe either of those is the case (motherboard is Asus, chkdisk finds no errors at all on the drive)

... Anyways.. Here it is..To start with, the computer takes super long time to boot up...

After boot up, sometimes hard drive will run constantly for 10-20 minutes regularly...Will then be okay for awhile and then same thing happens again.

Sometimes system slow down gets so bad the mouse cursor will freeze up, programs will be impossible to start or switch to...etc..Sometimes system will just plain lock up while the hard drive continues to work away at whatever it's doing and a restart is required.

I'm not putting a heavy load on here. Even when there's no load and the processor usage is at 2% or even 0% the hard drive will often be working away incessantly.

I THINK the problem is the RAM. She only has 256 and available is 224 (the rest is onboard video). Running Windows XP service pack 3. Processor 2.8 P4. Asus motherboard.


Couple of things I've already checked

1) Drive is running in DMA, not PIO.
2) Set Pagefile to 1.5x (333 MB), didn't affect issue
3) Have a bare minimum of software running in background. Only AVG.
4) Ran DOS chk disk and not a single error or anything out of place reported.
5) Already ran defragment. Reports defrag not required.
6) Checked Task Manager for processes using tons of disk writes/other, but nothing really comes up as too big to be putting this kind of drain/usage on the drive.

What I don't understand and why I'm not sure it's the RAM is that Task Manager reports 76k physical RAM available..commit charge total @ 400k (peak 600k). Currently have only the web browser and Task Manager running (with AVG in back).

Obviously if the system total is at 400k regularly and she only has 228 megs of RAM, there is a problem there...should it be that high (400mb) with only a web browser running? Is that 76k part of the TOTAL that's already in use? Or is it RAM just sitting there not being used (which doesn't make sense to me since Commit Charge is at 400k, wouldn't it use all the available physical ram it could?).

Any help on this appreciated. I'm leaving here in a day or so and want to have things working good for.

The girl I'm trying to help has NO money and a baby on the way, and I have little to spare. If the RAM is the problem, I don't mind shelling out a few bucks for an upgrade, but I want to make sure that's the issue before I invest in helping her out.

Thanks much and sorry for being so long winded and appreciate advice here.

Thanks,
Damian

 

[kjv1611]

Sorry about so many posts, but with older hardware, it's more of a challenge to try to get extra oomph out of such machines.

 

[damian5000]

Thank you all.