I have a comment about Stop Windows from Wildly Accessing your Hard Disk:

After a bit of research into the same problem I've been having for quite some time, with not much success disabled indexing, etc.:

After a bit of monitoring I noticed that Windows Management Instrumentation was writing to a log file several times a second (C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\Logs\wbemess.log but wmiprov.log also seemed to get less frequent access).

After reading the MS KB article on disabling this logging (Logging WMI Activity), disabling this logging seemed to improve the trashing. If anyone has any comments on why error entries would be getting logged this frequently, please post.

My monitoring also showed that subst'ed (Subst) directories seem to get frequent access as well. I deleted my subst entries (subst /d...) to get further improvements.

I have noticed that the drive light does flicker dispite both FILEMON and DRIVEMON not registering any activity.

I've also observed (as have others in this thread) the following process with constant I/O (as displayed in TaskMan):

svchost.exe
explorer.exe
csrss.exe
System

Regards -- Peter

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The referrenced article "Stop Windows....hard drive" does not apply to WinXP. Is there a reason you do not want the activity light to flash? Mine flashes when my AV (avast!) does an update, when Windows updates, and for various other functions. I consider it normal. Is there a reason you do not want your computer to perform internal diagnostics on a regular basis? Those would also seem to me to be normal. Are these tests and logs causing you a problem?
Some reasons that are not normal for the light to flash would be spyware calling home, P2P, and other malware at work while your comp is idle. Do you perform regular security checks? Is your AV up to date? If you feel your comp is secure and free of spys don't fret the rest.

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Without going through the entire thread (which you apparently haven't), I'll describe 
some reasons why I, and other people, have posted to this thread:

For me, the reason I've posted here is because my hard-drive light has indicated 
almost constant access (constant, as in the light is on at some point within every 
2-second timeframe).  This occurs despite having nothing running--including AV software-- 
or Windows Update is disabled, and recent scans have proven malware is not running.

While constant access may not be an issue for you, it certainly is an issue for other 
people.  One extremely valid scenario is people working with laptops.  With unwarranted 
disk access you drastically reduce the useful life of given battery charge.  This, 
of course, limits the usefulness of remote use of the laptop itself.

I've responded to your post not to flame you or your post but the distill some of 
the spirit of this thread.  I don't intend to entertain further discussion unless 
it specifically addresses resolution of some of the issues raised in this thread. 
 "Don't worry about it" is not a resolution.






On Saturday, November 27, 2004 at 11:10 pm, Gene Johnson wrote:

>The referrenced article "Stop Windows....hard drive" does not apply to WinXP. Is 

>there a reason you do not want the activity light to flash? Mine flashes when my 

>AV (avast!) does an update, when Windows updates, and for various other functions. 

>I consider it normal. Is there a reason you do not want your computer to perform 

>internal diagnostics on a regular basis? Those would also seem to me to be normal. 

>Are these tests and logs causing you a problem? 

>

>Some reasons that are not normal for the light to flash would be spyware calling 

>home, P2P, and other malware at work while your comp is idle. Do you perform regular 

>security checks? Is your AV up to date? If you feel your comp is secure and free 

>of spys don't fret the rest.  

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I would like to ask you to document the harm the blinking light has done to your machine. I consider the blinking light as normal. If you have proof that it is abnormal please advise, I would be interested in knowing.

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The problem is that most Windoze programmers consider computers to have infinite resources.

And, if the current generation of computers can't do what they need, they just expect the next generation to do it.

Look at the last 20 years of PC evolution.
- Timex Sinclair - 4K Mem, no HDD, No FDD
- Apple II - 64K Mem, no HDD, 360K FDD
- IBM PCXT - Max 640K Mem, 10 MB HDD, 4.77 MHZ Proc (8 bit)
- IBM PCAT - (generally used 640 K Mem, 40 MB HDD, ? Proc (16 bit)
- 386 - (often 640K Mem, 80 MB HDD, 20 or 25 MHZ
- 486 - Perhaps 16 MB Mem, 100 MB HDD, 40 or 50 MHZ
- Pentium - 32 MB RAM, 2 GB HDD, 75-150 MHZ
- PII - 64 MB RAM, 4 GB HDD, 233 - 400 MHZ
- PIII - 128 MB RAM, 20 GB HDD, 500 - 1000 MHZ
- P4 - 512 - 1 GB RAM, 80 GB - 200 GB HDD, 1.5 - 3.6 GHZ (32 bit)

- Memory requirements are over 10,000 times that of the Apple II.
- HDD requirements are about 10,000 times that of the PCXT
- Processor speeds are about 4,000 times that of the PCXT

I believe that many software manufacturers have discovered that once computers no longer perform as they should, they are upgraded, and many software programs are upgraded at the same time. Thus for large companies like Microsoft, there are HUGE benefits to making old computers run inefficiently.

Yes, the occasional flickering of a hard drive is benign.

However, constant HDD access can slow down the performance of the whole machine. It also could be a sign of much large problems with the system overall including possible virus attacks.

My company schedules “McAfee SCAN32” to run at odd times during the workday, and when it comes on, things definitely start slowing down. On my laptop, it takes nearly a full day for the process to finish due to a slow HDD.

I have another PIII-800 computer that was returned to me. It should be fine for general E-Mail and etc. Except that it is running an older 4.2K HDD that is dragging the whole system to a halt. I am now curious what putting on a Western Digital Raptor HDD (10K SATA) would do for the overall performance of the system.

Some of the heaviest HDD access on my laptop have been from:
- SCAN32 (McAfee full HDD scan, scheduled periodically)
- Network Associates McAfee in General
- Computer Associates Software Delivery Software
- VSMON (Zone Alarm… seems to access much more than it should be doing)
- CVPND (Cisco VPN. Also access lots of stuff on the HDD)

My experience has been that McAfee is one of the most resource intensive antivirus programs.

You might check out some of these utilities to monitor activities on your PC:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml
- Filemon - Very good FREE monitor of HDD activity
- TCPView - Trying this out, looks useful for TCPIP monitoring
- TDIMON - Also seems to have good TCPIP monitoring info
- PMON - Supposed to have process spawning monitoring. It doesn’t seem to want to run under XP.

Overall, it is hard for me to estimate the cost of hackers, viruses, spyware and etc. My experience is that on older computers (PII and PIII), the Antivirus programs, firewalls, registry monitors, and anti-spyware utilities can be sucking down OVER HALF of the machine’s resources, perhaps even more, and McAfee is THE WORST at doing this.
---- Clifford ----

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