View Full Version : Continuous Running Software
My C drive seems to be continually running, ie it sounds as if some software is continually at work. On checking Task Manager Processes, I find that UMSD.EXE is continuously working. What is this software, what's it doing and should I/ how do I stop it except when necessary?
A quick google suggests that it's the "USB Mass Storage Disk related tray icon". Sound plausible?
What version of windows are you running, and how much memory do you have? If a lot of memory has been allocated, Windows may be having to do a lot of swap-file management, that could be the activity.
Sorry - should have added...
Win 2K Pro, a fraction of mem in use. Nothing extra running. Puzzling... Curiousity, really, since it doesn't seem to affect anything.
Kill it, restart it? Symproxysvc (or whatever it is called, part of Norton AntiVirus) runs away from time to time and uses 99% CPU until I kill it. It then restarts itself and works fine ... well, until the next time it runs away.
If it's not a one-off, then i'd get rid of it (unless it's doing something useful, of course). Thrashing the hard disk doesn't sound like it can be a good thing.
I've stopped USMD using task mgr - that seems to have killed the activity. I'll see what happens next time I re-boot. I wonder what that prog does - any ideas?
FJJP
ZH875
21st Jan 2005, 16:24
UMSD is used by some Memory sticks that you shove in the USB port. On XP the stick should be recognised and useable without it, but some functions such as making it a bootable stick will not be accessible, neither will you be able to set a password protected area If you just use memory sticks as memory, try removing UMSD and if mem stick still works, leave it as is. UMSD places an icon in systray which has a green and white horizontal bar at the bottom.