[jst42day]

A few months ago I submitted a similar request but was never able to fix the problem.
Now it seems the problem is slightly different from what I had thought it was.
I have a home built pc with an Asus P5Q-E motherboard, E4600 cpu, 4g's ram and a WD 640g hard drive. The HD is brand new as of 1 week ago.
I formatted all partitions to NTFS.
Partitions are C-49g, E-244g and F-303g.
I've separated the software programs from system software. I had not done this before, but it has no bearing on my problem.
OS is XP Pro w/SP3 and all updates and patches that were needed have been installed.
Had a problem initially with installing updates but fixed the installer with a method found on the MS Help and Support site.

My hard drive is thrashing around constantly. The HD light is blinking around 1 per second during idle times.
When at idle Task manager shows 99% cpu idling.
No activity shows up anywhere including I/O read and writes.
I already turned off Indexing Service.
I tweaked according to the suggestiosn at Blackviper's site and also used Harden-it for a bit more security.
Nothing I have done has helped with the thrashing.
I'm a novice and really don't have a clue of how to fix this.
Last time I posted, it was just for the light. However, I may not have realised that the drive was constantly spinning.
I Googled this for a while and have found that this is not specific to my hardware. Seems to be an XP problem.

Today I tried disabling the Page file app..
No luck. It just made the system slower and I enabled it again.

When I had this problen in the past, I just realised, on an old emachines pc, it presented itself as a constant little flash or blinking on the monitor. Gave me quite a headache. It was most noticeable when Task Manager was open. When I highlighted a process I could see the blinking.
I can do that now too.
I know it's something within XP but it's way over my head.
Hope you can help.
jst42day

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If your CPU is idling at 99%, let's find out why.

Go to Start > Run, and enter \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\procexp.exe and press Enter, which will run Process Explorer. Click on the CPU column to organize it by CPU usage, and see what is taking all the CPU. You could post a screenshot too.

[The Admiral]

If your CPU is idling at 99%, let's find out why.

Go to Start > Run, and enter \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\procexp.exe and press Enter, which will run Process Explorer. Click on the CPU column to organize it by CPU usage, and see what is taking all the CPU. You could post a screenshot too.

[The Skeptic]

99% "system idle process" is great. It's opposite to what you think. It means that only 1% percent of cpu resources are used and 99% are free for other uses.

[jst42day]

99% "system idle process" is great. It's opposite to what you think. It means that only 1% percent of cpu resources are used and 99% are free for other uses.

It shows no cpu usage yet the platters are spinning. The light is blinking and I'm going crazy.

I'll check the first suggestion tonight and post the results.
Thanks to both of you.
jst42day

[jst42day]

If your CPU is idling at 99%, let's find out why.

Go to Start > Run, and enter \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\procexp.exe and press Enter, which will run Process Explorer. Click on the CPU column to organize it by CPU usage, and see what is taking all the CPU. You could post a screenshot too.

Lets see if this works.
Thanks for your help.
jst42day

For some reason the files aren't being uploaded.
However, I'm seeing a constantly changing cpu load.
Idle is 99% then Firefox takes up 1.5% and back again.
And WSC Help(?) 3+ every minute or so.
Thanks for any help.
jst42day