I'm curious

  • Thread starter Thread starter inkleput
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I

inkleput

With a different OS on my old desktop computer I kept a process meter
running and it was nil most of the time after it sat for a while. The
hard drive was never accessed.

On my laptop with XP Pro I expected it to be even quieter to save the
battery, but any time the screen is up I see the drive light coming on
every few seconds no matter what power configuration it's in.

What kind of sense does this make?

JimL
 
With a different OS on my old desktop computer I kept a process meter
running and it was nil most of the time after it sat for a while. The
hard drive was never accessed.

On my laptop with XP Pro I expected it to be even quieter to save the
battery, but any time the screen is up I see the drive light coming on
every few seconds no matter what power configuration it's in.

What kind of sense does this make?

JimL
Click to expand...

A lot of sense. It's highly likely it's doing exactly what it was told
to do, but since you included exactly ZERO information all that's
possible is a few guess at the most likely things. Things such as:
-- Your antivirus is doing idle-time scanning,
-- The Disk Indexing Service is running & indexing files
-- and any of a thousand or so other things you or programs you
installed or someone else might have set up to run when the computer
isn't being used, such as backups, defrags, checkups, hardware tests,
etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.. Heck, worst case you could even had been
zombied and all that activity is due to the hundreds of thousands of
spams your computer is sending out while you think it's idle. Or maybe
it's just a simple malware that does nothing but endlessly exercise the
hard drive, or searches for personal information to send out the second
you open a browser, or maybe it's a 0-day bomb getting ready to go off,
or the hard drive/s and partition/s are being overwritten with garbage
or self replicating malware - who knows?

Check this out:
My old car is quieter than my new car. Can you tell me why that would
be? I'd think newer cars, especially a hopped up hemi like this new
one, would be super quiet, com,pared to my 1946 4 cylinder Vauxhaul
Tourer.
I just gave you many magnitudes more info than you provided in your
post, but ... none of it's any good to hazard the reasons behind what I
asked about. Even though it looks like I gave you info to work with, I
gave you zip to work with. Even "new" is an ambiguous term, as is hemo,
hopped up, and so on.

But at least you got to vent your curiousity so maybe it's not a total
loss. Right? ;^]
BTW, I am NOT suggesting you have malware or viruses, although it's
possible.

Cheers,

Twayne
 
A lot of sense. It's highly likely it's doing exactly what it was told
to do, but since you included exactly ZERO information all that's
Click to expand...

The constant accessing began the first day I put XP on the laptop. So
your standard "You didn't ask your question with proper technical
precision," crap is beside the point. But then there HAS to be at least
one sour grapes turkey on every NG.

Have nice day.

JimL
 
With a different OS on my old desktop computer I kept a process
meter running and it was nil most of the time after it sat for a
while. The hard drive was never accessed.

On my laptop with XP Pro I expected it to be even quieter to save
the battery, but any time the screen is up I see the drive light
coming on every few seconds no matter what power configuration it's
in.

What kind of sense does this make?
Click to expand...

Something is configured on the laptop (either by you or the original
manufacturer or by some third party program you or the original manufacturer
(or anyone else who has installed something on your laptop) installed either
on purpose or through some malware infestation) to access the disk and/or
the data it contains in some way.

- AntiVirus scans
- Disk "optimization"
- An applications trying to access the Internet to check for updates
- A background process doing something....

The hard disk drive light is not the same as a "process meter" by a long
shot. ;-) Install the process meter and see what it tells you.
 
Twayne said:
The constant accessing began the first day I put XP on the laptop. So
your standard "You didn't ask your question with proper technical
precision," crap is beside the point. But then there HAS to be at
least one sour grapes turkey on every NG.

Have nice day.

JimL
Click to expand...

Sorry. Wrong. It still specifically and precisely applies.

OK, then here's some advice on what to do instead of what you asked:
Do a full clean install of XP. Then wait for indexing to complete
before you install anything else. It'll take awhile & you'll see lots
of disk activity meanwhile. Then, oh, wait; seems like i'm repeating
myself, lol,
 
Twayne said:
It did it on a full, clean install. Oh wait. I'm repeating myself.

JimL
Click to expand...

OK, then the answer is, it's building an index, based on that little bit
of additional information.
 
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