HD Activity When Idle

[bigredmachine]

I dont know if this is normal or not but I noticed it a couple of weeks ago and it is bugging me...When i am not using my pc, even while sitting here looking at this web page, the hd sounds like it is doing something (few clicks every couple seconds), it does this but the hd indicator light does not blink. There is no antivirus running, so no scanning, only yahoo widgets and zonealarm. I am worried it is a virus or some other unwanted problem. Should I be concerned about this?

 

[DelJo63]

I fully understand -- this is my reaction too.

First, set your VM size to a FIXED value; eg 2x your real RAM. This will
stop XP from expanding it and make your system more responsive too.

Second, make user you have the default setting for Prefetch; if you've never
heard of this -- GOOD, just leave it alone.

Try using the Taskmgr, Processes tab and click on the CPU usage heading twice
to show System Idle Process at the top. Now you can monitor which process
is active when you observe the symptom. If there's nothing obvious,
click on the Networking tab and monitor for internet access; someone
may be 'calling home' for updates.

 

[Nodsu]

If thse builtin utilities don't help, download the filesystem monitor from Sysinternals - it will show you all filesystem access in realtime.

 

[bigredmachine]

In File system monitor, what kind of things should i be looking for, tons come up very second. I took a couple screenshots of it running. can I post them here?

 

[Nodsu]

You should look at what comes up during this suspicius idle activity.