strange hard disc action

[nitro rig driver]

OK here goes
Running xp home with sp2 and all updates etc and connected to internet

Start lappy from cold (ie not from standby etc) and do not type in the password for my account (so it just displays the choice of accounts)

left it for 20 mins whilst on phone etc
came back and noticed that the hard disc light is flashing very fast/on continusly so its trying to do something but what

Should it be doing anything considering that i have not signed in,
if it is and shouldn't be -what is it doing and how can it i fix it if it shouldn't be doing whatever it is doing ?

[Saab Dastard]

There are lots of background tasks that could be causing this - AV check, updates of various programs (including XP), disk housekeeping etc.

The fact that you aren't logged in doesn't really matter - most of these things run as services, so are independent of a logged-in user.

For peace of mind you could run full AV and anti-spyware scans (you should do this regularly anyway). You could also look at the "hijack this" site and post details of running processes to see if there is anything suspicious.

SD

[hellsbrink]

Screensaver operating?

[nitro rig driver]

Ok thanks guys
Yes I do run AV etc fairly regular and have Norton 360 so I expect that's the main culprit running in the background.
Seems just about everyone hates it but Norton has done the job for me over several years-and yes it does sometimes hog the CPU but I
can live with that .

[amanoffewwords]

It might be the Indexing Service which tends to be switched on by default for some unfathomable reason - switch it off by right-clicking on the C drive in My Computer, selecting Properties and untick "allow indexing service to index this disk for fast-file searching".

You can also disable it in the services panel of admin tools in the control panel.

[The late XV105]

My wife's laptop does this and it's always the AV product which does a full scan on cold boot. She therefore sets it to hibernate most nights, but once a month or so does a cold start out of ingrained practice, but only when she won't actually need to use it for 45 minutes afterwards!

To pick up on another previous comment: We have another old laptop with only 256kb memory and on which the small 10GB HDD is 85% full. On this machine the HDD thrashes like crazy during screen saver activity.

[hellsbrink]

XV105, that be because the physical memory is so low the system uses virtual memory (space on the hard drive) to do things more than ever. Therefore, when things run the HD gets accessed like crazy.

[The late XV105]

I know that, thanks hellsbrink, which is why I made a point of stressing the low amount of memory and the HDD size. With 85% of the latter in use, and precious little volatile memory data is constantly being shunted between the two even with just a screen saver running.

I was just trying to agree with a previous post that it is possible for even a screen saver to trigger hard work for a HDD.