FYI

[JimL]

As regarding my posts about laptops flashing the hard drive light
continually:

It may be useful to someone to note my experience. I have spent hours and
hours identifying processes. I have switched off processes. I have deleted
stuff. I even totally removed AVG so its huge stores of self-restarting and
undeletable junk was gone. One thing is clear.

As I shut down process after process of known software like my firewall, my
anti-spyware, my remote drive, my anti-virus, my clipboard reader, etc.,
etc., the hard drive access lessened with each one I shut down until there
was almost none going on.

This indicates that there is no hidden malware driving the continual
accessing.

This indicates that my starting question about about whether it was normal
for laptops to do this (as opposed to piling up a bunch of details about
what machine I was using, etc.) was spot on, appropriate and proper. (I
wanted a simple answer and asked a simple question.) And it indicates
something about the people who jumped down my throat for asking it.

As an aside I found something else about AVG that matched my experience with
it, a question I found many people asking about on different forums. Even
when we eliminate AVG from startup and nothing appears in the system tray or
anywhere visible, it runs a huge process that is anywhere from 40 to 93 mb
(mine) in size - depending on how new it is.

JimL

 

[Twayne]

As regarding my posts about laptops flashing the hard drive light

continually:

It may be useful to someone to note my experience. I have spent
hours and hours identifying processes. I have switched off
processes. I have deleted stuff. I even totally removed AVG so its
huge stores of self-restarting and undeletable junk was gone. One
thing is clear.
As I shut down process after process of known software like my
firewall, my anti-spyware, my remote drive, my anti-virus, my
clipboard reader, etc., etc., the hard drive access lessened with
each one I shut down until there was almost none going on.

This indicates that there is no hidden malware driving the continual
accessing.

This indicates that my starting question about about whether it was
normal for laptops to do this (as opposed to piling up a bunch of
details about what machine I was using, etc.) was spot on,
appropriate and proper. (I wanted a simple answer and asked a simple
question.) And it indicates something about the people who jumped
down my throat for asking it.
As an aside I found something else about AVG that matched my
experience with it, a question I found many people asking about on
different forums. Even when we eliminate AVG from startup and
nothing appears in the system tray or anywhere visible, it runs a
huge process that is anywhere from 40 to 93 mb (mine) in size -
depending on how new it is.
JimL

You're quite correct in your analysis, JimL. There are a few "thought
police" types here who, rather than responding to a poster's question,
instead want to question the poster's intelligence for wanting to do
something rather than provide a useful response. Rather than simply
ignore a post that's not formatted exactly as THEY would prefer it,
they, instead of ignoring it, berate the questions and question the
reasons for wanting to do something,, which is a pretty silly and
childish thing to do. There are some mostrous egos here, even
narcissistic in a couple cases, on top of a few of them having
completely closed minds.

Don't let it drive you away; there are some very knowledgeable people
here whose interest in assisting posters is genuine. A little lurking
or just looking back thru old subjects will pretty quickly identify who
they are for you. But it's easier to just ignore them, actually, as
they deserve.

Your experience with AVG isn't unusual, BTW. Many programs of that type
suffer the same malnutrition of the author's brain in that way.
Fortunately those leftovers don't normally cause any problems for users
and if someone does discover them, they are easy enough to eliminate if
you have a bit of experience. 100 Meg is pretty small in the overall
scheme of things, but still, those things shouldn't be covertly left
behind as so often happens.

And lastly, I'd like to add, that your experience with the flashing
drive light diminishing with each removal like that is, well,
interesting. It would indicate that you discovered the ones causing
background disk activity, but not necessarily prove that you have no
malware.
It also doesn't mean you DO have malware either; it's just that they
are two different animals and in some cases it's possible you "turned
off" the malware activity by stopping those programs and services from
running.
In many cases, until malware is KNOWN to be gone, it's very hard to
diagnose a problem, so the first step in troubleshooting problems
without obvious causes is to do complete AV and spyware scans. Once
that's done, then troubleshooting can begin in earnest, without having
to worry about malware interfering with the results and causing wild
goose chases.

Twayne

 

[Daave]

As an aside I found something else about AVG that matched my
experience with it, a question I found many people asking about on
different forums. Even when we eliminate AVG from startup and nothing
appears in the system tray or anywhere visible, it runs a huge process
that is anywhere from 40 to 93 mb (mine) in size - depending on how
new it is.

That's because you didn't disable it *completely*.

In addition to unchecking avgtray in the Startup tab, you need to
uncheck AVG8 WatchDog in the Services tab.

That should do it.

Actually, the above instructions are for msconfig. If you run Autoruns,
you'll see a whole mess of other AVG entries, including avgrsstx.dll
(the AVG Resident Shield Starter), which can be found here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows

I'm not sure if you need to disable anything other than avgtray and AVG8
WatchDog, but if you do, Autoruns is what you need to use.

 

[Daave]

As regarding my posts about laptops flashing the hard drive light
continually:

It may be useful to someone to note my experience. I have spent hours
and hours identifying processes. I have switched off processes. I
have deleted stuff. I even totally removed AVG so its huge stores of
self-restarting and undeletable junk was gone. One thing is clear.

As I shut down process after process of known software like my
firewall, my anti-spyware, my remote drive, my anti-virus, my
clipboard reader, etc., etc., the hard drive access lessened with each
one I shut down until there was almost none going on.

This indicates that there is no hidden malware driving the continual
accessing.

This indicates that my starting question about about whether it was
normal for laptops to do this (as opposed to piling up a bunch of
details about what machine I was using, etc.) was spot on, appropriate
and proper. (I wanted a simple answer and asked a simple question.)
And it indicates something about the people who jumped down my throat
for asking it.

Who jumped down your throat? Are you sure that's what happened? The only
thread I could see was the one called "Simple question for laptop
users." I saw only two replies, and both were helpful.

Unfortunately, there are some immature rascals posting here who
admittedly aren't helpful and can even be abrasive. It is best to ignore
them.

In my experience with laptops, the answer is no, it is not normal for a
laptop's hard drive access light to flash 30 to 40 times a minute.
Perhaps an over-reliance on the pagefile is causing this to happen with
your laptop. But Malke is correct; if you want us to assist you in
finding and eliminating the cause, it is important for you to provide
the necessary details, including the amount of RAM you have and the
Commit Charge figures, among other things.

Judging by your paragraph above about eliminating processes one at a
time, my guess is that you either need more RAM or you need to configure
your system to run more lean.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Judging by your paragraph above about eliminating processes one at a time, my guess

is that you either need more RAM or you need to configure your system to run more
lean.

Or it is Indexing which is most likely

 

[JimL]

It also doesn't mean you DO have malware either; it's just that they are
two different animals and in some cases it's possible you "turned off" the
malware activity by stopping those programs and services from running.
In many cases, until malware is KNOWN to be gone, it's very hard to
diagnose a problem, so the first step in troubleshooting problems without
obvious causes is to do complete AV and spyware scans. Once that's done,
then troubleshooting can begin in earnest, without having to worry about
malware interfering with the results and causing wild goose chases.

Twayne

Thanks for your post and point well taken. I haven't assumed I have no
malware, only that it isn't THE cause of heavy accessing.

As for running AV and spyware scans, I do that every day with AVG and
SpyHunter. But I have seen that to get "everything" you really need to run
half a dozen different anti-malware programs of each class.

Unfortunately it is getting hard to know what to use. At this point various
programs are calling EACH OTHER malware. How do you know the good from the
bad when the malware creeps are putting out so-called anti-malware programs
which are, themselves, malware????

I got one program from CNET (Spyware Detector as I recall) thinking it would
be as good as it gets. It messed up a whole bunch of stuff and was nailed
by two other anti-malware program as spyware itself. It was the most
"stringent" of anything I've used, but it didn't touch the high access rate
thing.

I wish I knew which anti-virus programs were being found most useful by
general users. I'm convinced you need to run more than one to even come
close to being clean.

JimL

 

[JimL]

That's because you didn't disable it *completely*.

In addition to unchecking avgtray in the Startup tab, you need to uncheck
AVG8 WatchDog in the Services tab.

That should do it.

Actually, the above instructions are for msconfig. If you run Autoruns,
you'll see a whole mess of other AVG entries, including avgrsstx.dll (the
AVG Resident Shield Starter), which can be found here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows

I'm not sure if you need to disable anything other than avgtray and AVG8
WatchDog, but if you do, Autoruns is what you need to use.

Thanks. I hope I can remember that msconfig>services thing. Apparently
something keeps checking back to that list and restarting whatever is there?

By the way, how can you get stuff OUT OF the services list? I see
(unchecked) stuff in there referring to programs I quit using years ago, but
the only removal tool I see is "Disable All." I'm guessing there is a file
that holds these items - like as not incrypted.

JimL

 

[JimL]

Who jumped down your throat? Are you sure that's what happened? The only
thread I could see was the one called "Simple question for laptop users."
I saw only two replies, and both were helpful.

Unfortunately, there are some immature rascals posting here who admittedly
aren't helpful and can even be abrasive. It is best to ignore them.

In my experience with laptops, the answer is no, it is not normal for a
laptop's hard drive access light to flash 30 to 40 times a minute. Perhaps
an over-reliance on the pagefile is causing this to happen with your
laptop. But Malke is correct; if you want us to assist you in finding and
eliminating the cause, it is important for you to provide the necessary
details, including the amount of RAM you have and the Commit Charge
figures, among other things.

Judging by your paragraph above about eliminating processes one at a time,
my guess is that you either need more RAM or you need to configure your
system to run more lean.

I note that when I DID post full details about my system I got not a single
reply.

I don't recall this moment how to check it, but such times as I have
stumbled across it I've always had near half a gig of memory free.

JimL

 

[JimL]

Or it is Indexing which is most likely

Anything "most likely" interests me, but I don't know what you are referring
to.

JimL

 

[Daave]

Thanks. I hope I can remember that msconfig>services thing.
Apparently something keeps checking back to that list and restarting
whatever is there?

By the way, how can you get stuff OUT OF the services list? I see
(unchecked) stuff in there referring to programs I quit using years
ago, but the only removal tool I see is "Disable All." I'm guessing
there is a file that holds these items - like as not incrypted.

One way is to use the program Autoruns (it's like msconfig on steroids):

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

 

[Daave]

I note that when I DID post full details about my system I got not a
single reply.

If you are talking about this one:


.... keep in mind that the microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics group gets
very little traffic. You'll have better luck posting to
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, which is where I am now
cross-posting to.

In that post, the only pertinent info (specs-wise) you gave was:

"I have a Thinkpad T42, Centrino 1.7ghz, 1gb mem, 10 gb free disk space,
XP
Pro SP3. SP 3 is recent..."

Not a bad start, but we don't know how large your hard drive is. That
means we don't know what *percentage* of it is free. You later stated
you once had a Zlob infection. While it's possible it has been
completely eradicated, it's also possible there are remnants left
behind. That needs to be ruled out.

One gig of RAM is normally more than enough but without Commit Charge
figures, we just don't know. Sometimes errors force the hard drive's
transfer mode to a slower one. If you would really like to get to the
root cause of sluggshness (or excessive hard drive activity), you need
to use the scientific method. We can help.

I don't recall this moment how to check it, but such times as I have
stumbled across it I've always had near half a gig of memory free.

I'm not sure what this means.

Anywho, this is what I normally post regarding poor performance, etc.:

Regarding sluggishness in general, here are its usual causes:

1. Malicious software (malware)

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up.

3. Too many of *certain types* of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge.

Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to
configure them not to always run at startup:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to
not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
Otherwise, you may want to explore this further by running Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/

and

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

 

[Olórin]

Anything "most likely" interests me, but I don't know what you are
referring to.

JimL

I suspect that what is meant is this:

In Windows Explorer, right-click C:\-drive, left-click Properties; in
General tab, see if "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file
searching" is ticked. If so, untick; click OK; choose to apply to "all files
and subfolders" (or similar phrasing); watch for access denied warning, hit
"Ignore All", let it continue to the end. Repeat for D:\, etc (on hard
drives).

I always do this on all my PCs.

 

[JimL]

I suspect that what is meant is this:

In Windows Explorer, right-click C:\-drive, left-click Properties; in
General tab, see if "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast
file searching" is ticked. If so, untick; click OK; choose to apply to
"all files and subfolders" (or similar phrasing); watch for access denied
warning, hit "Ignore All", let it continue to the end. Repeat for D:\, etc
(on hard drives).

I always do this on all my PCs.

Thanks. The process went fine (if lengthy), but it hasn't slowed down the
access rate.

JimL