Discs pulsing much of the time.
 

Is there a utility that will show me what the hard-discs are doing? Since fitting the second drive, they are never at rest. I've turned off anything that might scan them but still they or it is active much of the time.

Sometimes the light (just one ) shows rhythmic pulses...perhaps one a second which coincides with the light on the plug for the yellow lead to the router.

It really does sound at though someone is looking at my disc.

I've run Adaware and AVG and then turned them off.

I realize that having this two disc set up might be causal, and intend only having one disc at a time soon as I get sorted. But it started shortly after fitting them...about when I downloaded AVG.

Nothing is showing in Task manager.

Try downloading this from sysinternals
DiskMon for Windows

Don't know if it will do what you want though

also browse through tis lot

File and Disk Utilities: Sysinternals Center, Microsoft TechNet

Process explorer is a goodun, since windozw is usually fluttering about in the background with a duster. Otherwise, welcome to Vista - you'll get used to it:hmm:

Look at the processes running in Task Manager. Or better still, use Process Explorer instead.

Use Performance Monitor (perfmon) and set it to capture disk and network and physical disk activity (you may need to RTM).

SD

Well, disc monitor is showing myriads of minute writes and a lesser amount of reads.

I just doesn't have the sound of previous intrusions.

Processes are showing activity, but I've never been able to be sure of what I'm editing there. I think I have killed something norty, then find my mouse won't scroll or something daft like that.

Funny though, it's stopped doing it now.!

My son won't let me get onto pprune when I;m at his house. He says he just cant be doing with being swamped with cookies. Have to say, he hits masses of sites, and gets nowhere near as many as pprune.

My very first impression of Vista (assuming that's what you have Rivets) was that it wouldn't shut up. Compared with XP, it was enormously busy & I really didn't like that at all, to the extent that I went on a mission to shutdown all the non essential stuff & there is a lot of that in Vista.

However, it's always a good idea to start at first principles - are you nicely defragged old chap?

Sorry, I meant to say, this is on the XP pro disc, which is a fairly new installation. It just could be that drive H: the old and still prepared with OS drive c: is receiving attention. I haven't made the program show the drive letter if indeed it can.

There are thousands of writes. Some reads. most are 8 long some 16 32 and 40 they go to a wide verity of sector numbers.

Have to start purging the running progs when me head clears from the medicine. and booze.

This has to be a virus...but so far AVG has not found anything. Which is strange. Strange because I can never remember it not finding something on the Pre-last Christmas edition. Things are just not the same since the new program was installed. I am on the Free edition, but the old one was so good. Is the new one up to that standard?

With Disk Monitor, The disc is showing Write hundreds...nay, thousands of times - to totally random? sectors. Every so often there will be a row of Reads, but then back to write. Smells of summit norty I think.

Does this ring any bells? If I don't find a virus, it's more work stripping this disc again while I could be experiencing the pleasure of learning Vista ::rolleyes:

One has decided to dedicate one of the H-Drives to Linux...it is just possible I may be asking some more dumb questions.

Remove the internet connection and then check the disk activity.

SD

From Microsoft Knowledge base The system performance is slow after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 or upgrade to Windows XP with Service Pack 2

the solutions are listed there as well.

SYMPTOMS

After you install Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or upgrade to Windows XP with SP2, you experience slow computer performance. For example, you experience the following symptoms: •If you browse the Internet, the performance is slow.•If you try to download newsgroup e-mail messages, some or all of the messages are not downloaded.•There is excessive hard disk activity.•Overall system performance is very slow.http://support.microsoft.com/library...us/uparrow.gifBack to the top

CAUSE

This issue occurs if one of the following conditions is true: •You have spyware or malware running on the computer.•You have viruses that are running on the computer.•You do not have sufficient free space on the hard disk.•You do not have sufficient random access memory (RAM) installed on the computer.•You have corrupted or outdated drivers.•You have too many files in the Recycle Bin or temporary folders.

Completely untraceable "the disk does something once a second" problems date back to at least Windows NT 4.0.

Interesting. Plenty to keep me going tonight when me brain won't shut down.


Saab I think I had tried that, but tried it again just to make sure. Still writing pages of data in Disk Monitor, sometimes 100 lines in a second. Several hundred in a burst. The it goes quiet for a few moments.


One will remove the original HD tonight, to purify the logic a bit.

The other thing is Check Disk being called every start up...and one time hundreds of pages of something were erased then seemingly replaced. I thought that would be the end of it, but wishful thinking I'm afraid.

I think there is no point in too much further work until I've taken Occam's razor to the drive set up.

Indeed It does, and certainly my HD light flashes about once a second or so on XP SP2. I think MS are in league with the drive manufacturers to wear them out quicker.

indexing service?

Mmmm....The old drive was so quiet that just perhaps it's been going on for a long time. The Seagate is quick for old technology, but lets you know it's there.

Even so, I find it hard to believe that this has been going on without my knowing. Too tired tonight to pull stuff apart...See what Sunday brings.

I've configured the warning light to show. It's RED (write) most of the time :ugh:

Instead of SysInternals DiskMon, which gives low-level disk access information, try FileMon, which tells you which files are being accessed by what. I've found this more useful for determining which programs are accesing the disk(s), e.g. it showed me how heavy the Windows Search service and Symantec Anti-Virus are. (Spurious disk access is a bigger issue on my SSD-equipped eeePC 1000 "netbook" than on a standard desktop PC.)

Sounds interesting. One will try it...thanks.


S'funny, but there is no doubt that since I've put the old disk back in by itself, it's not doing as much.

I've no lights that flicker on the modem, but while the case is open I can see the light blinking a small amount by the cable outlet to the Router. There is the very occasional write showing on the light. It will be interesting to really monitor what's going on.

But then as I've said, one of my sons here, won't let me go on Pprune, cos he says he get deluged with cookies.

Sadly, can't get File Mon to down load. Blank main screen with the flag waving at the top, but nothing happens.


Par for the course. Just spent some mins signing up for Works which was an OEM bundle. Took ages with two of those dumb smeary words misidentified...and I'm normally good at those. Then put in SN...yep, they say it's wrong.

One is departing for the garage where I have a very large vice with an anvil on the back of it. I'm going to do this for a while...:ugh: It'll be less painful that working with computers.

I've just got Filemon to download with no problems - if you like to PM your email address, I'll bung it over to you early tomorrow (your time!).

Thanks...check your PMs


LOL! It's just occurred to me. I've just posted to see about yahoo grinding to a stop. I truly believe there's a conspiracy agin me.

Anyway, I'll get me mail from my son's - if his is going...Mostly Viagra links. :hmm:

Thank you both for the help...will PM when I get control again. Don't hold your breath!:\



Got the file off one laptop...set Yahoo posting. LR

I had this once too and could never figure out what it was. Finally I decided it was the SATA hardware and ignored it.
Later when I replaced the motherboard and used the same disk (no reinstall of Windows) the pulsing was gone. So I'll write this up to the SATA hardware of that board.

I'm so steep on the learning curve right now, that I haven't been monitoring the HDs as much as before. There is no doubt that with just the original disk, and OS XP Home, that the relentless pulsing has stopped. There is a bit, but nothing like it was before.

I've yet to put in the program sent to me this morning to monitor drives, but I'll report when I catch up with the Yahoo problem.

When it was at its worst, there were two drives in an unusual configuration. Well, unusual when the slave drive was called by the BIOS to be the MASTER.

As mentioned in another thread, it all worked so well, except for getting CHECKDISK on a full start...and of course this incessant pulsing.

Now I have two reasons to put the larger new disk in by itself. Will it still pulse, and can I get me mail.

Shall start pulling cables this very....

Okay, slight delay re Yahoo, but have now just got the 400g drive in by itself.

Disk monitor is still showing thousands of small writes.


I'll put the XP home Drive in again - and install the other monitor program that was sent to me.

I've got Disk and File Monitor running now. The pulse times against the ship's clock at 1 second.

Set the drive to go off in 3 mins and the DM stops but the file monitor plods one hphmon05 seems to be the main 'user'. With skype and explorer popping up now and then.

Well the main thing is that it doesn't seem to be the fault of the dual drive setup that I would like to keep. And G the W and others sound confident that the standard was set ages ago.


Something just brought the disk back to life. svchost tedious when you don't want the disk to run. With this soft, I'll be able to see if the disk is allowed to sleep peacefully.

Thanks again for all the help.

I've got both me H-disks in on a new ribbon cable and it's just the same.

One util is showing it flip-flopping between system Idle process, and Deferred procedure calls. About in time with the one second pulse.

Not much else seems to be happening.