Harddisk load with Vista ?!?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ole
  • Start date Start date
O

Ole

My Vista PC is accessing the HD all the time - sometimes once every
second and sometimes more continuesly. Have tried to figure out what
could be the problem, but haven't been able to - any idea (I'm new to Vista)

Thanks
Ole
 
Ole said:
My Vista PC is accessing the HD all the time - sometimes once every
second and sometimes more continuesly. Have tried to figure out what
could be the problem, but haven't been able to - any idea (I'm new to
Vista)

Thanks
Ole
Click to expand...

It's probably indexing. Does it impact on performance?
 
Ole,

It sounds like your computer is using pagefiles to boost your memory. That
would be a symptom of insufficient RAM. Open taskmanager (right click the
taskbar and select taskmanager). Click the performance tab. If the
physical memory is consistently high, you probably need more RAM.
 
Bookman said:
Ole,

It sounds like your computer is using pagefiles to boost your memory. That
would be a symptom of insufficient RAM.
Click to expand...

Very premature diagnosis. It is more likely to be due to indexing, or
virus scanning, etc. Pagefile usage is at the end of the list of
probabilities.
 
Hi, Ole.

Since you are "new to Vista", the disk activity probably is, as the others
said, the Indexing activity. You can click Control Panel | Indexing Options
to see what it says. This is supposed to work in the background while the
computer is otherwise idle, stopping immediately whenever we press a key or
when some other program needs the CPU. For a big HD with lots of files,
this activity can go on for a few days, especially if we keep the computer
pretty busy with foreground tasks and turn it off when we are finished. It
might help to let it run overnight to complete its initial indexing. After
that, the interference - and the hard drive activity - should be minimal.

Many users get discouraged with Vista during the first week, when it is
doing a lot of housekeeping and self-tweaking to customize your installation
to the way you work. Also, during this first week, you will be doing a lot
of one-time-only jobs that will require Administrator privileges, such as
installing all your applications. To make Vista much more secure and WinXP,
User Access Control guards against many dangerous practices that previous
Windows versions allowed. This makes it seem more intrusive, especially in
the beginning. It takes most of us a while to abandon the WinXP mindset and
get used to the new way of doing things.

After the first week or two, though, most Vista users say that they would
not want to go back to WinXP.

Which version of Vista do you have? How much RAM and how much disk space?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 7000
 
Hi and thanks,

Have tried to pause the indexing service and it made no difference. My
Laptop has 4GB RAM 2GHz Core2Duo (T6400) and a 320GB HD and Windows
Vista Home Premium SP1

BR
Ole

R. C. White skrev:
 
Ole said:
Hi and thanks,

Have tried to pause the indexing service and it made no difference. My
Laptop has 4GB RAM 2GHz Core2Duo (T6400) and a 320GB HD and Windows
Vista Home Premium SP1
Click to expand...

You didn't answer my question. Has this an effect on performance? If
not, just don't worry about it.
 
Ole said:
Hi and thanks,

Have tried to pause the indexing service and it made no difference. My
Laptop has 4GB RAM 2GHz Core2Duo (T6400) and a 320GB HD and Windows
Vista Home Premium SP1
Click to expand...

That surely rules out page file or RAM issues.

Have you completely STOPPED indexing in Admin Tools/Services
and via right-clicking on the drive and unticking that option?
 
Hi and thanks,

Have tried to pause the indexing service and it made no difference. My
Laptop has 4GB RAM 2GHz Core2Duo (T6400) and a 320GB HD and Windows
Vista Home Premium SP1

BR
Ole
Click to expand...

Good luck finding it. I have the same issue. Process Explorer doesn't
show any activity through Windows. Then again the disk get thrashed at
logon and PE doesn't show what's thrashing it... I guess MS doesn't
want us to know.
 
Download Process Monitor from MS. It will show all process, registry,
and disk activity in real time.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx
Click to expand...

That might be too much information.

A simpler place to start is
Run Task manager (C-A-Del Task Manager, or right click on taskbar and
select from menu)
Go to the performance tab
Under Physical memory I would expect Cached to be 2000-3000, and free less
than 100
Under Kernel I would expect Total to be well under 500
Under System I would expect page file to be about 2000M

Press Resource Monitor
Look at the graph for memory - the scale should 100 Hard Faults/sec, and
you shouldn't see much green graph.
Look at the graph for disk - the scale should usually be 100KB/Sec, and
the blue line should rarely be visable.

Click on the disk section and the first line should have a response time
well under 100ms.

If this is so then it is routind background activity that isn't impacting
you - its only disadvantage is it prevents the disk spinning down because
it is never idle.

The disk detail will list what process is accessing what files. If the
image is svchost then look up the PID in the services tab of Task Manager
(you may need to check show processess from all users in the Process tab)


I am basing this on my system which only has 2GB of RAM and guessing how
the extra 2GB alters things.
 
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