[relmore]

ive adjusted all kinds of power saving settings: to sleep after so many minutes, or to hibernate, to turn off Harddisks, or to do nothing. It doesnt matter. After a few minutes of being idle or going into one of the selected modes mentioned while in regular mode XP, i can hear my harddrive working its butt off. it doesnt matter if its in hibernate/sleepmode/or just idle. It sounds like its defragging and will continue to do so until i become idle again. As soon as i so much click the mouse, it doesnt make a peep. When im in Safemode, it is as quiet as a mouse after long periods of being idle so obviously its something with the software loading in XP. I can't figure out what though. What would be your best suggestion in figuring out what is causing the HD to do this? Im not even sure if this is the right forum to post this topic. However, i don't think this is a malware issue. After roughly 2-4 minutes @0% processing, it starts processing as shown in the performance tab jumping up and down from a range of usually 7% to 18%. I have stopped all Norton/symantec services and startups.

I have winpatrol and have stopped all non-microsoft services. I don't know where to start with the microsoft services. What are u guys thoughts? Thanks!




I have included my uninstall list here.
Ad-Aware SE Personal
Adobe Acrobat 5.0
Adobe Download Manager (Remove Only)
Alarm Clock v1.0
Anvil Studio
AOL Instant Messenger
Broadcom Advanced Control Suite
ccCommon
CertBlaster
Classic PhoneTools
CleanUp!
Conexant HSF V92 56K Data Fax PCI Modem
Dell Digital Jukebox Driver
Dell Modem-On-Hold
Dell Picture Studio - Dell Image Expert
Dell Solution Center
Dell Support
Digital Line Detect
DivX Codec
Easy CD Creator 5 Basic
HijackThis 1.99.1
Intel® Extreme Graphics Driver
Internet Worm Protection
iPod for Windows 2006-01-10
IrfanView (remove only)
iTunes
J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 6
Java 2 Runtime Environment Standard Edition v1.3.1_04
Java 2 Runtime Environment, SE v1.4.2_05
Lavasoft VX2 Cleaner
LimeWire 4.9.30
Linksys Wireless-G USB Network Adapter
LiveReg (Symantec Corporation)
LiveUpdate 3.0 (Symantec Corporation)
Macromedia Flash Player 8
Modem Helper
MSRedist
Norton AntiVirus 2005
Norton AntiVirus Parent MSI
Norton SystemWorks
Norton SystemWorks 2005 (Symantec Corporation)
Norton Utilities
Norton WMI Update
NSW_DRM_COLLECTION
OnWeb Web-to-Host Java MS Crypto Native Support
OnWeb Web-to-Host Java Native Support
Paint Shop Pro 7
PartyPoker
QuickTime
RealPlayer
Security Update for Step By Step Interactive Training (KB898458)
Security Update for Windows Media Player (KB911564)
Security Update for Windows Media Player 10 (KB911565)
Security Update for Windows Media Player 10 (KB917734)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB890046)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB893066)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB893756)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB896358)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB896422)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB896423)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB896424)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB896428)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB896688)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB899587)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB899591)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB900725)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB901017)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB901190)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB901214)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB902400)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB904706)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB905414)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB905749)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB905915)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB908519)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB908531)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB911280)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB911562)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB911567)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB911927)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB912812)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB912919)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB913446)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB913580)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB914388)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB914389)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB916281)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB917159)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB917344)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB917953)
Security Update for Windows XP (KB918439)
Send To Phone 1.2
Shockwave
SPBBC
Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4
SpywareBlaster v3.5.1
Symantec Script Blocking Installer
SymNet
Update for Windows XP (KB898461)
Update for Windows XP (KB900485)
Update for Windows XP (KB910437)
Update for Windows XP (KB916595)
Windows Genuine Advantage v1.3.0254.0
Windows Installer 3.1 (KB893803)
Windows Media Format Runtime
Windows Media Player 10
Windows XP Hotfix - KB873339
Windows XP Hotfix - KB885250
Windows XP Hotfix - KB885835
Windows XP Hotfix - KB885836
Windows XP Hotfix - KB886185
Windows XP Hotfix - KB887472
Windows XP Hotfix - KB887742
Windows XP Hotfix - KB888113
Windows XP Hotfix - KB888302
Windows XP Hotfix - KB890859
Windows XP Hotfix - KB891781
Windows XP Service Pack 2
WinPatrol

Edited by relmore, 03 August 2006 - 12:25 PM.

[Advertisements]

I could be XP indexing your hard drive. When your computer is not in use for a short period of time, XP will automatically index the contents of you hard drive for faster search times. I usually disable Indexing to boost performance. To disable on your drive, open My Computer, select the drive right-click on Properties, then look near the bottom of the window and uncheck "Allow indexing service to index this disk for fast file searching", click OK, and select the option to apply it to all subfolders. Then, repeat this for every drive/partition on your computer.

After this, does the activity continue?

[Pi rules]

I could be XP indexing your hard drive. When your computer is not in use for a short period of time, XP will automatically index the contents of you hard drive for faster search times. I usually disable Indexing to boost performance. To disable on your drive, open My Computer, select the drive right-click on Properties, then look near the bottom of the window and uncheck "Allow indexing service to index this disk for fast file searching", click OK, and select the option to apply it to all subfolders. Then, repeat this for every drive/partition on your computer.

After this, does the activity continue?

[Neil Jones]

This is usually XP indexing the drive (which you can turn off as previously stated) or XP is defragging the drive, which it does by default after so long.

[relmore]

I don't understand why it would still index when i set the power options to turn off hard disks after X amount minutes. Also, not sure if this matters, but I received numerour errors during the process when making the change. the error was that i wasnt able to apply to certain files. ie "C:\quarantine\infected" and several windows directory files. I eventually hit "ignore all".


This did not fix the problem. she's gone idle again and after 3 minutes is working her tail off as we speak. (im on a different computer)



What else might you recommend trying?

[valis]

it starts processing as shown in the performance tab jumping up and down from a range of usually 7% to 18%

Have you looked at the processes tab to see what process is corresponding with the spikes? Sort it by cpu usage to track it down easier.

[relmore]

it looks like System idle process is upper 80's and lower 90's
then Cisvc.exe coming in right behind it with 5-15 and system will kick up there at 02 every now and then

so i see that Cisvc is index related. I have doublechecked and the box to allow indexing is unchecked for the only and primary HD. I manually ended the process in task manager and It looks to have stopped. Im not sure what is going on here. I rebooted after i made the initial indexing change under drive properties.why is Cisvc still starting?

Edited by relmore, 04 August 2006 - 11:33 AM.

[Pi rules]

If you want, you can disable the service. That is why it is starting with XP.

To do so, go to Start | Run and type services.msc. Then, find Indexing Service, right-click and Stop it, then change the startup type to Disabled. I usually don't recommend this at first just in case someone wants to turn indexing back on and forgets to reenable the service.

Good luck!

PS: System Idle Process just displays the clock cycles not being used. So if it's at 92%, that means only 8% is being used.

Edited by Pi rules, 04 August 2006 - 11:41 AM.

[relmore]

hah yea i was just editing my last post to say i figured it out and had disabled the service. But thanks alot. So periodically, say.... every 2 weeks i should index the drive?

[Pi rules]

I usually don't index it much at all; I just strictly organize my files and search once every few weeks. How often do you search for files and folders? Does it matter if it's a little slower? I find the wait acceptable even though I have well over 100 GB of files (mostly for a video editing project I'm doing for fun).

[relmore]

hmm very rarely do i run local searches so the wait will be acceptable to give my harddrive a little longer lifespan. i was under the assumption that all of the constant indexing/labor would probably wear down the harddrive faster. or am i way off base here?

[Pi rules]

Just about any physical movement will wear down a hard drive eventually, but I do not know how much or how fast. The main reason I turn off indexing is for better performance on tasks (with the exception of hard drive searching).