light of the hard disk will be very busy until I come back

[wellas666]

Hi,

When I leave my computer for a while, the light of the hard disk will be very busy until I come back and do something.

Anything wrong?

 

[electronicsfreak]

hm if you built this computer im guessing you hooked the led up backwards. If you did not , check to see if you have windows xp auto updates turned on as it can be selected to download updates when computer is idle.

 

[BadFrog]

Most likely it is defrag running while the PC is inactive, then stops when it detects activity.

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein

 

[wellas666]

electronicsfreak,

Thank you for your response. Can you tell me how to check if my windows XP auto updates is turned on?

 

[wellas666]

BadFrog,

Thank you for your response. Can I find amy report about the defrag?

 

[BadFrog]

I don't know about any reports but here's what I did: My PC after sitting idle would start to grind away on the hard drive for no apparant reason. As soon as I moved the mouse to open something it would stop. I opened up task manager and chose the processes tab, then I sorted by CPU utilization with the highest at the top. Let the PC sit for awhile until hard drive started grinding again. Then I simply checked the process that was cruncing the CPU, googled it, and discovered it was just a defrag process running. Sorry I don't remember the exact name of the process.

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein

 

[electronicsfreak]

Autoupdates will be in control panel.

As for the auto defrag these links might be helpful.

http://www.compu-docs.com/W2KDfrag.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/tips/default.mspx

http://www.morphasys.com/autodefrag/

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows+xp+auto+defrag&btnG=Google+Search

 

[smah]

Several virus scanners do some of their work when the system is inactive as well.

Steve

 

[electronicsfreak]

Very Good suggestion smah I never thought about that but that is very true lol. Very very good suggestion.

 

[wellas666]

BadFrog,

Thank you, I will do your test.

 

[wellas666]

electronicsfreak,

Thank you. I have just checked that I got no Autoupdates for the system. And, there is no Scheduled Task for the auto defrag in the Control Panel.

 

[wellas666]

smah,

Thank you. How to know which virus scanner doing that?

 

[smah]

Which do you have installed?

Steve

 

[guitarzan]

Another possibility is a screensaver such as seti@home, which does work when your computer is idle.