hard drive working overtime

[supa_dre]

A strange thing is occuring as I post this topic. My hard drive light is constantly flickering. It has been doing this for the past hour or so. I checked Task Scheduler to see if I had anything such as defragging or virus scan, etc. that could be running in the background but nothing is. Of course I could reboot my system and see if this continues but I may be stopping something important. This has happened before and cold booting did not help. At the time, the system was scanned for viruses, and while this was in process the unexplained drive activity ceased spontaneously...........hey, wait a minute........the dang thing just stopped, but still, could anyone shed any light on what this might have been? I know that windows do some mysterious things in the background but this takes the cake.

[This message has been edited by supa_dre (edited 03-31-2001).]

[sea69]

#1 there may be something wrong with your light http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

cause if you're running a virus scan there should be intense- activity (disk) going on.

had you ever run msconfig ??

this has been posted here so many times we should make a page to instructions .. hehe

click" start, run, type in "msconfig" (without the "quotes")

press enter , go to Start up TAB, and UNcheck all the things that you don't need running.

re-boot.

**and you don't really need taskscheduler running all the time either, just be sure to run scan disk and defragg once a week, in fact- having that run all the time can actually prevent defragg from completing .

most say, all you need is explorer, and systray, but you may need a few other things for your personal set up. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

------------------
**puff**.. "Put that thing out boy.. the Sheriff's a comin'!!"

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 03-31-2001).]

[supa_dre]

Well I guess I should have mentioned that I can also hear the drive working, so it is not a problem with the light....I will reboot later though, I just ran msconfig.

Thanks, I will monitor this situation.

[mjc]

If you have McAfee Antivirus and you have the background scan enabled you will see drive activity when the system is not doing much. I used to have the background scan enabled, but it got too annoying, now I manually scan, frequntly, it seems to be a quicker scan (not getting interrupted whenever I do something) and frees up a bunch of resources, too.

------------------
mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/highrise/11/index.htm)

Do Vulcans even have to debug?

[Steve48]

Hello,

It sounds like your swap file id too small. Right click on "my computer" then click on properties, then ppreformance then virtual memory.
In virtual memory you will have 2 chices, let windows manage it (default), or set it up yourself. Put n about 2.5 times the amount of RAM in both the minimum and maximum. For example, if you have 64 megs of RAM then 160 in Minimum and Maximum will do just fine. If you have 128 meg or more, I would put 200 in bothe Min and Max. Anyway, hit OK and windows will give you a bogus message about windows not being able to work if you do that.......HORSEFEATHERS! Windows will work just fine! But you will have to reboot for the changes to take effect. I will bet that your HD light will be much less active!

[Paleo Pete]

Fixing the swap file size will work, but I've seen no difference at all. I've tried both ways, fixed and letting Windows handle it, as well as putting the swap file on a separate hard drive, none of them seemed to make a bit of difference in performance. Not having enough free space might be another possibility to check into. Windows needs to have at least 100MB at all times, I prefer to keep 300MB free if possible. Right now I have my swap file on its own 500MB partition. Nothing else there...

Tinkering with it might reduce hard drive activity, I never had a problem with that, and when I did it was usually related to something else, in one instance defrag trying to run after an unfinished scheduled defrag, and in other cases by things like virus scanners and Norton's system works running in the background.

Another possibility to consider is a trojan running. Sometimes those will work away and never show up anywhere. Check win.ini and look for RUN= lines. Mine has nothing listed, which is normal. Usually that's one of the best ways to spot trojans. Run sysedit and look through system.ini and win.ini, if you have explore.exe listed anywhere, start worrying. One of the trojans out there renames explorer.exe to explore.exe. I can't remember where the reference is, but it's often also added to the RUN= line in win.ini. Another installs a file named patch.exe. Again, I'm not sure where to find it, and haven't been able to find the links I once had to the info...still looking...

------------------
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[Steve48]

Hello again,

For a brief description of the swap file, and what can happen when it is dynamic (windows default), go to www.jefflevy.com, (http://www.jefflevy.com,) lessons, and find lesson #3.(Resizing swap file). Besides that lesson there are over 100 other lessons. They are all free and some cane be very usefull.

Steve

[Paleo Pete]

Good site, once I got the link to work. Here's one that works.
Jeff Levy on Computers (http://www.jefflevy.com/)

Steve: Don't put a comma behind the url, the link won't work. I had to look at your post to see what had happened, using the edit button. It was typed "www.jefflevy.com," and the comma is not acceptable in a URL. I also added the space to be sure this shows up as text rather than another non-working link...

I'll be taking a closer look at that site later, looks like lots of good info there. Thanks for another good site.

------------------
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)