XP is constantly accessing my hard drive

[BFC]

This is driving me insane. The OS has run exceptionally well since a clean install was done on October 26, 2001. However, once every couple of minutes, the hard drive is accessed.

I have tried everything I can think of. Reset all paging file sizes, turned off error reporting, anything that even looks like it would actually cause a process I have shut down, but the problem still occurs.

I know I am not the only one with this problem. I have seen others griping about it on the MS user groups and there still seems to be no solution to the problem.

Can someone help me on this? It interferes with mouse activity, sound, everything I do. It is very frustrating.

Please help.

 

[Lonman]

Do you defrag your drive on a schedule? What kind of defrag program are you using?

 

[BFC]

I run defrag about once every three to four weeks. It does not help the situation at all.

I also downloaded the latest chipset drivers and had hoped that it would help, it did not.

 

[AmarSingh]

do you have the indexing service turned off?

 

[BFC]

Yes, indexing is turned off, and I am not using indexing on MS Office either. Thanks.

 

[patrickjp]

yeah this happenned to me as well..

what I did was turn task manager on as soon as disk activity was happenning and I found some crap application that was running (can't remember the name) but I got rid of it with ad-aware (spyware removal) www.lavasoft.com get the adaware proggie and see if anything weird is running on your system.

alos, try the task manager and see what's not familiar in there

 

[BFC]

That program did seem to help, but the problem is still there. I tried running the task manager, and it does not seem to do that when I am watching it. Sort of like a car problem that clears up when you go to the mechanic.

I do appreciate all the input on this.

 

[pc_tek]

try disabling system restore function... the restore feature works great if you ever need to go back, but it does have the drawbacks of constantly listening to your harddrive rumble.

your choice! hard drive rumble with a safety net in the restore feature... or no noise, figure out what the heck ya did...hehe

 

[BFC]

I wish it were that simple. That was the first thing I did when this problem started.

 

[pc_tek]

what is in your startup group?

start>run>msconfig>startup tab

 

[Lonman]

Try turning off the hibernation feature too.

 

[BFC]

I shut off everything in my startup group, it did not help. Shut down the hibernation feature long ago, did not help. Turned off logging and debugging, no help.

This is most likely a driver issue. I am out of ideas. You guys have been very helpful though, thanks for trying.

What is cftmon?

One process I see running in the taskman is LSASS.exe. Not sure what that is either.

 

[Lonman]

Here's an article on ctfmon.exe:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q282599

 

[UniSol]

Could be a realtime antivirus scanner in the processes.

 

[patrickjp]

try disabling system restore function, and hibernation..

are these accessible in the services window to disable?

 

[BFC]

They are all disabled already. I really think, with the exception of reinstalling XP, I am out of options. It could be a bad driver for one of my devices too.

I really am glad I found this site. You guys are a great reference. Thank you.

 

[`Gallen`]

Defrag issue

I have had similar issues with XP and HardDrive activity.
For the longest time I have suspected it was a hidden feature in Windows XP and I still haven't confirmed it, but I just exprerienced the disk activity problem again, I wasn't doing anything, I left my computer for about a half an hour and all of a sudden alot of disk activity was happining, i quickly opened the task manager and discovered a process called or something like it "defrag" It's some sort of auto-defrag and i have been unable to disable it, or find any info on it.

 

[Az_Hammer]

Memory?

I'm new to this group, so I hope I'm not jumping in with an idea thats been covered. My harddrive thrashed after everything I tried, until I went from 56k memory to 256k. All HD thrashing has stopped.

 

[operator]

I, too, have had this problem off and on ever since I installed XP. I contacted MS tech support and traded email with them for about 5 weeks with no resolution. Then, all of a sudden, the problem cleared up. It hasn't happened in over a month now. I already had 512MB of RAM before XP installation, so I don't think that was a problem. I have noticed that the more I download, or the longer I do something that is HD or graphics intensive, the longer the HD runs before it stops. I've tried using a fixed swap file size and that seems to help some. That's about all I can suggest.