General maint. questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter MB
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M

MB

I have a Dell Dim 2400 system with XP Home. I'm not sure if this is totally
an XP question, but ...

1) I notice that at 1:00 AM the disk drive starts running and there is about
3 minutes of noticeable activity. This happens every day at this time. What
could this be?? I didn't see anything listed under scheduled
maintenance/tasks, but perhaps I am not looking in the right place. Also,
when I press ctr/alt/del I see plenty of processes running so I can't really
decipher from that what it might be. Any ideas on how I can track down what
is happening (I suspect it is some routine task, but what??)??

2) I run Ad-Aware about once a week and it always seems to identify about 33
files. I eliminate them, but next week it again identifies these files (it
calls them data miners). I then follow it with Spybot and it seems to find
an additional 14-15 files. I eliminate those. But am I accomplishing
anything since the same (approx) number of files re-appear week after week.
I guess first I am wondering if this is a high or low number of spy-type
files and any ideas of how to avoid this continual accumulation of the same
files!

Oh, yeah, I also run my AV program (AVG) every week or so and it has never
identified any viruses. I also do disk cleanup sometimes and I'll defrag my
drive every few months.

Mel
 
I have a Dell Dim 2400 system with XP Home. I'm not sure if this is totally
an XP question, but ...

1) I notice that at 1:00 AM the disk drive starts running and there is about
3 minutes of noticeable activity. This happens every day at this time. What
could this be?? I didn't see anything listed under scheduled
maintenance/tasks, but perhaps I am not looking in the right place. Also,
when I press ctr/alt/del I see plenty of processes running so I can't really
decipher from that what it might be. Any ideas on how I can track down what
is happening (I suspect it is some routine task, but what??)??

2) I run Ad-Aware about once a week and it always seems to identify about 33
files. I eliminate them, but next week it again identifies these files (it
calls them data miners). I then follow it with Spybot and it seems to find
an additional 14-15 files. I eliminate those. But am I accomplishing
anything since the same (approx) number of files re-appear week after week.
I guess first I am wondering if this is a high or low number of spy-type
files and any ideas of how to avoid this continual accumulation of the same
files!

Oh, yeah, I also run my AV program (AVG) every week or so and it has never
identified any viruses. I also do disk cleanup sometimes and I'll defrag my
drive every few months.

Mel
Click to expand...

I don't know what the other poster meant by sort on the processes
tab... kind of no help there, but here are some ideas.

First of all, Spybot and Adaware are probably flagging "cookies" which
really are not harmful the way most paranoid people think they are.
They simply track your existence, not anything personal.

As for disk activity, it could be that after a certain amount of idle
time, Windows is flushing the swap file. I am really not sure if it
does that, but it is a possiblity. That would account for some heavy
disk activity for a few minutes.

Check if you have any programs that are always running that have their
own maintenance tasks. Not everything goes in the System Task
Scheduler if it was designed to be done by the application instead of
by windows.

Otherwise, I would not worry too much about it.

HTH


---Atreju---
 
Folks:

OK, I did as suggested. The program appears to be cisvc.exe

But I see nothing that would indicate why it would start at exactly 1:00 AM
every day. What am I missing???

Mel
 
Folks:

OK, I did as suggested. The program appears to be cisvc.exe

But I see nothing that would indicate why it would start at exactly 1:00 AM
every day. What am I missing???

Mel
Click to expand...

Aha! Microsoft Indexing Service (or rather, a component therof). It is
indexing your files for faster searches. You can leave it on or shut
it off... doesn't matter. I don't think I have indexing turned on in
my system, but it is not harmful.



---Atreju---
 
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