On Sat, 25 Jul 2009 11:46:38 -0400, "Twayne"
Harold A. Climer wrote:
Harold A. Climer wrote:
In reference to my recent message about Hard Drive activity I
also I have noted several strange things about my Hard Drives.
(C:/ especially.)
Hi, Harold.
As a rule, you should never start a new thread if it is about
the same issue. It makes it difficult for people to get all the
relevant information. If it has been a long while, I can
understand wanting to start a new thread (I'm not sure two
weeks is considered a long time...). At the least, a link to
that other thread should have been included in your post.
Fortunately, I haven't deleted your other post yet, so as a
public service, here is the original:
[start]
I have an HP pavilion A1520N computer running Windows XP MCE
with SP3 installed.
I have two hard drives installed with partitions C and D on the
master drive and K and L on the slave drive. I also have a
Maxtor USB I TB drive as the O drive.
The D drive is the system restore drive.
In the last week I decided to de fragment all my drives since
it has been since Christmas vacation since I did it last.
After doing this I noticed that there was a large increase in
disk access compared to before de fragmentation. At times the
little yellow disk activity light is on almost constantly on
and for long periods of time.
Originally I had my Page File on Drive C (400GB and about half
full). Today I moved the page file to Drive K( 300GB with about
50GB of files on it). As per Microsoft article on Virtual
memory etc.
I also noticed that since de fragmentation it seems as if the
computer sometimes locks up. By this I mean that after closing
a program it takes quite a while for another program to
respond to a mouse click to get it started or to access the
Start menu, etc.
Thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...ead/56022d22c9460b34/225aa2fc391e1a0?hl=en&q=
[end]
Oh, and whenever you come across someone rude, just killfile
him!
How much RAM do you have?
You need to walk before you run. Instead of experimenting with
the placement of the pagefile on a separate hard drive (which
*may* yield *slightly* better performance... then again you
might not notice any improvement at all...), let's get back to
basics. Only your system drive (C
needs a pagefile. Let's
make sure (first) that *none* of your drives has a pagefile:
From
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php (an excellent
reference BTW):
Where do I set the placing and size of the page file?
At Control Panel | System | Advanced, click Settings in the
"Performance" Section. On the Advanced page of the result, the
current total physical size of all page files that may be in
existence is shown. Click Change to make settings for the
Virtual memory operation. Here you can select any drive
partition and set either 'Custom'; 'System Managed' or 'No
page file'; then always click Set before going on to the next
partition.
So, in your case, Harold, for each of your four partitions,
select "No paging file."
By the way, it is at *this* time (with no pagefiles), that you
should want to defrag your hard drive! There will be no
fragmentation in your pagefile because there *is* no pagefile!
Once you are ready, reboot. Repeat the steps above, this time
select "System managed size," which is almost always the best
(or close to it) setting.
At some point in the future, you can experiment with locating
your system drive's pagefile on either K: or L: (whichever one
is the "basic" drive... note in Alex's info that "
n
relocating the page file, it must be on a 'basic' drive.
Windows XP appears not to be willing to accept page files on
'dynamic' drives.), but for now, it's not a priority.
Using Norton Speeeddisk I have only been able to only get down
to 25% fragmentation from about 46%.
Frankly, I wouldn't worry about that at all. If you can't help
your curiosity, use its defrag function after you delete your
pagefile. Just make sure to recreate it when you are finished!
Windows XP needs it to operate efficiently.
When I used the Windows defragmenter utility it reports from
2% down to less than 1%.
Sounds good.
Both programs report some files can't be defragmented. (
Volume information files(Restore Point information I think)
Does anyone know if there is malicious software out there that
deliberately increases the fragmentation of a hard drive?
Stop worrying about fragmentation! It's not a big deal with XP
like it used to be with earlier OSes.
That being said, *do* be concerned about malware. Malware can
certainly cause excessive hard drive activity. What is the
current malware status of your PC? What antimalware programs do
you use? Do they have the most up-to-date definitions?
Could it be that the hard drive controller on the motherboard
is flaky?
I doubt it.
Once defragmented it, takes less that a day to get back up to
40+% fragmentation.
The excessive read or writes is still occurring. Each event
lasts from 15 to 45 seconds or more(I have timed it).
During this time the computer is unresponsive to mouse clicks
or movement of icons etc using the mouse.
Could be malware. Could be a resource hog like Norton(!)
getting in the way. How much RAM do you have?
The next time you notice lots of hard drive activity, try this:
Open up Task Manager (Control + Alt + Delete). Click on the
"Processes" tab. Click CPU (third column probably) twice so
that the processes using the most resources are at the top.
Jot down the top five. What are their names?
Finally, while you are in Task Manager, click on the
"Performace" tab. Look under Commit Charge (K) in the lower
left-hand corner. What are the values for Total, Limit, and
Peak? Knowing these figures along with how much RAM is
installed will give us a good idea on how much you are paging.
Handles 20151 Physical Memory
3144172 Threads 670 Available
2364672 Processes 71 System Cache
2478716
Commit Charge Kernel
Memory Total 641640 Total 204956
Limit 6123360 Paged
143156 Peak 1257692
Non-paged 62212
Note: The Total commit charge went up to 875*** during what I
am calling the very high disk activity.
The above values were taken during very low disk activity.
None of the other reading changed very much during the unusual
disk activity.
You answered *some* of my questions. The amount of RAM is 3MB,
apparently. And even if your peak was as high as 875,000+ another
time, there is no excessive paging. That is good to know.
Now, please answer my *other* questions if you would like my
assistance.
Have you gotten rid of the pagefiles, defragged, and set a new
pagefile on C: only, using "System managed size"?
And...
What is the current malware status of your PC? What antimalware
programs do you use? Do they have the most up-to-date
definitions?
I am sorry it took a while to answer you,but I teach first and
second semester Physics in the summers and I just gave the
students their last exam before the finals, so I have been quite
busy. Also my computer at work went loony and I had to back up
all my files and reinstall the OS(Vista). It has been quite a
week!
To answer your first question:
1) I made sure all page files were off on all hard drive
partitions. 2) I defraged all drives.
3) I turned on the page file for drive C:/ only and set it to let
the system decide the size.
4) I defraged again. I used the built in XP defragger.
I use Zone Alarm Pro for fire wall etc, and anti mal ware. It is
up to date.
Those are reasonable. The general concensus is that you need a
firewall (ZA), a good antivirus software program and at least 3
anti spyware programs, for future considerations. As yet no single
spyware detector is turn-key and catches everything; each have
their own strengths, thus multiples are a good idea.
BTW I read something the other day about graphics cards getting
too hot because the fans stops working causing problems: locking
up, etc. Could that affect the hard drive activity?
Fairly unlikely I think, unless you know one of the fans are out.
There is a program called SIW - System Information for Windows,
which will read any temperature sensor in the computer. Nearly ALL
hard drives have sensors. It's free from:
http://www.gtopala.com/
and an excellent tool to have on hand. Basically it's what the XP
System Information should have been all along, IMO.
Temperature "probably" isn't the issue, but at least it can be
eliminated easily with that program. Or proven, as the case may
be<g>. It's being a hot & humid summer so far so it is possible,
especially if the mechanical internal design for heat's chimney
effects aren't the best or cables are blocking it.
Has anyone suggested you look in Task Manager Processes tab to see
what service/task is using all that time? I don't recall if you've
mentioned it. Highlight the cpu column and click the column header
two times to get it sorted high to low and watch for the activity
to start. Start TM and leave it minimized until the problem shows
itself; you'll also have a history of the cpu activity you can view
in the Performance tab. When TM is minimized, it becomes a tray
icon that shows cpu performance.
Unless it's malware, which status I don't know as I've not followed
the whole thread, it shouldn't be hard to track down what's
running. Then it's just a matter of figuring out why with some
other tools.
HTH,
Twayne`
PS You do know your e-mail address is being scraped up for spam
lists by having it in clear in your posts? Many robots scan these
groups to scrape addresses from. It shouldn't appear in your
headers either.
The hard drive is still showing the same high activity from time
to time. Again it lasts from about 30 seconds or a bit more.
I have recorded about twenty episodes so far and that is the
average. Harold A Climer
Dept. Of Physics Geology, and Astronomy
U.T, Chattanooga
Rm. 406A Engineering, Math & Computer Science Building
615 McCallie Ave. Chattanooga TN 37403
(e-mail address removed)
I used two anti malware programs SuperAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes.
The found some Adware and some bots that was all; got rid of them
still much disk activity.
I used the processes part of the Task Manager and saw that the
System Idle Process 0 used a lot of CPU time, up to 99% at times.
Is this bad?
