Lots of Hard Drive Activity when doing nothing? 2

[EvilTwinOfAtrus]

Hi,

Ever since I'ved used Windows Xp Pro (on several machines) I've come accross a problem with all of them. After about 20 minutes of leaving the computer, there is lots of hard drive activity for roughly 5 minutes and then the cycle starts again. Indexing is turned off, there are no background programs. Can anyone help me? I don't want it making that noise when I'm trying to get to sleep .

Thanks,
Karl

 

[synthetic666]

how big is drive and how much ram do you have?








Rock on!!!! Compute on!!!!! Whatever Dude!!! lol!!!

 

[EvilTwinOfAtrus]

Oh, thats not the problem, i have a gig of ram with virtual memory turned off and have a 120 gb hard drive with about 80gb free.

Thankyou

 

[SWilent]

I notice the same thing: WinXP thrashing on the hard disk, but none of my programs are doing it. In Task Manager, I noted that FINDFAST.EXE was listed twice, and both of them were using the CPU at various levels -- sometimes a few percent, sometimes 40 or 50 percent, and occassionally near 100 percent.

Anyone know what's going on?

SWilent

 

[SYAR2003]

http://www.geek.com/tipstrix/misc/findfast.htm

 

[bcastner]

The idle process is a time in which a lot of background chores are done. Your icon cache is rebuilt; your startup programs are mini-degragged and positioned towards faster parts of the disk; your MRUs for files and programs rewritten; disk indexing if enabled is done. There is quite a bit going on.

 

[vengeanceforsuji]

Yeah I have the same problem here too, but it starts right after I boot the computer.

Here's how it happened: I installed Hitman 2 one day, and while I was playing it, it crashes right in the middle and my computer reboots. After that, every day, when it starts up and loads all the stuff, the hard drive activity goes haywire and it hogs the system even though the Task Manager says there are no programs using up resources except for System Idle Process.

 

[SYAR2003]

In XP i suggest it's the indexing service.

Enter add/remove programs in control panel
add/remove windows components.
remove indexing

Control Panel
Open administrative tools
Services
Edit the indexing service to disabled.

Also look if there is any scheduled tasks
you don't want to have.
Start-Programs-Accesories-System Tools

 

[bcastner]

Of everything you can do to optimize Windows XP, one of the simplest is just to use it. As you launch and exploit applications, Windows observes your behavior and updates a dynamic file called Layout.ini. After every three days, when it senses that the computer is idle, it rearranges the locations of programs on the system hard drive to optimize their launch and execution.

XP also speeds up and the boot process and optimizes the launch of programs by using prefetching. Windows observes the code and programs that are used immediately upon bootup and creates a list of data to prefetch very early in the boot process. Similarly, as individual programs are launched, Windows keeps track of different files and components are accessed. The next time the application is accessed, Windows prefetches the necessary items to expedite the application's launch.

The prefetch optimizing code exists both within the XP kernel and the task scheduler service. The kernel keeps track of pages that are referenced by a given process immediately after the process is created. The service transforms the recorded pages into prefetch instructions for that process. The next time the process is created, the kernel executes the prefetch instructions, speeding up the creation of the process.

Disk optimization and application/boot prefetching work in tandem. That is, when XP optimizes file system for faster program access, the data it recorded for the application and bootup prefetch processes is factored in to determine optimal file placement on the disks.

 

[SYAR2003]

EvilTwinOfAtrus
virtual memory turned off

A side note !

If you have a large amount of RAM (at least 1 GB), you might think that Windows XP would never need virtual memory, so that it would be okay to turn off the page file. This won't work, however, because Windows XP needs the page file anyway and some programs may crash if no virtual memory is present.

http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/expertzone/columns/mcfedries/03june16.asp

 

[jstevens]

When your system is idle, windows xp starts defragging your hard drive. I saw a program that would allow you to turn that off, as im sure its a registy setting, I thought it was tweakui xp but dont recall exactly.

Jason

 

[jstevens]

I think the option to turn off the defrag was in this program.

http://www.webattack.com/get/freshui.html

Jason

 

[jstevens]

Is there a way to EDIT your existing post, I dont see a link to do so, so anyway,

[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
Modify/Create the Value Data Type(s) and Value Name(s) as detailed below.
Data Type: REG_SZ [String Value] // Value Name: Enable
Setting for Value Data: [N = Disabled / Y = Enabled]
Exit Registry and Reboot

 

[EvilTwinOfAtrus]

Actually, virtual memory is not NEEDED at any point, its just that its pointless and silly to disable it if, say, you have 128mb of RAM for example as your bound to run out and make the computer crash. It's wise to disable it at 512 if you don't have any memory hogging apps such as video editing etc although I found that some games just touch on this mark and therefore crash. But 1GB has been no problem, and I've never seen or heard of something that crashes just because virtual memory is turned off. Even if there is, I'm sure theres a simple workaround.

Thanks for your answers guys, but none of them are my problem. :-(

- Karl

 

[xproforme]

Perhaps the solution to your problem would be to put your system into hibernation or standby if your hardware suports these features. It would also prolong the life of your hardware as heat generation degrades electronic components over time. What the heck give it a try and see what happens.

 

[solderjockey]

SWilent: If I remember correctly, findfast.exe is a component of Microsoft Office. If you look in your "Startup" folder, I believe you will find it there. I have removed this before with no harmful effects.

sj

 

[nelljack]

I am new to xpp. Where does one go to uncheck whats running in the startup?

I do not find "fastfind" under task manager either.

 

[bcastner]

Start, Run, msconfig
Look under the 'Startup' and 'Services' tabs.

 

[nelljack]

Thanks bcastner. I completely forgot about msconfig. Kudos.

No more help needed. At least for now.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Virtual memory is used by Windows even if you "switch it off". It is essential for modern operating systems to have an on-disk swap-out area - this includes Linux/UNIX, which has an entire partition dedicated to VM. In fact, Windows has several of these sand-pits e.g. Temporary Internet Files. It is true that some programs will crash if VM is disabled.

Leaving the Page File at its default settings will cause Windows to read and write stuff when it thinks the system is not otherwise busy. Windows dynamically resizes it according to its needs. If you set it to a fixed size, then you will never have hard disk activity due to dynamic resizing again, although there could well be other reasons.

If you have 512Mb RAM and open up a 700Mb Video file, the data that cannot fit into RAM has to go somewhere. Likewise, if you edit a part of that video, the unedited part is stored in order for "undo" to work.

Other things that might cause disk activity when the computer is otherwise idle include services and SysTray tasks. You may want to examine the services and tasks you're running and ensure you're only running the ones you need. There's a good list at

http://www.blackviper.com

- but take his advice and ONLY disable services you really don't need, or you could end up with a PC that won't start up.

Hope this helps