PC Sluggish and hard drive acitivity light

[darkcyber]

Ok, I'm running an AMD 64 X2 3800+ 939 cpu with 1 gig of ram and a WD 250 gig 7200 rpm hd. It seems like anything I do that my systems seems to have to access the hard drive. If I open Firefox, thunderbird...any program. There is always a delay while the pc hits the hd. I have my swap file set to 2 gigs on my second 160 hd in this pc.

Any suggestions on how I can cut down of the pc having to access the hd all the time? I almost feel like I'm running Windows 98...i.e. how it always had to use the hd for everything.

It's not fragmentation either...I have Diskeeper set to run every night.

Thanks!

 

[Sleepsalot]

First thing that comes to mind is spyware or virus. Open task manager and see what processes are running and if any thing is using excessive cpu or memory.

 

[darkcyber]

There is like 62 processes running. Most are like zero (0). There is one called 'System Idle Process' and it's at like 85-92.

Why do you think the system has to access the hard drive everytime I do anything on it? i.e. if I start up Firefox...the hd light comes on, if I start just about anything, the hd light comes on. It's like it's having to access the swap file for memory.

 

[Roguestar]

Check task manager and see if your memory is all being used up.
Check msconfig.exe and see what stuff is starting at startup.
Run CleanUp! (google it) to clear out temp stuff.

 

[darkcyber]

Roguestar,

Thanks! I ran CleanUp and it found and deleted about 10 gigs of stuff. The pc is still accessing the hard drive. Can't figure it out. I've been through the Task Manager, msconfig and ran two different spyware programs...etc. Just strange. It may be that 1 gig of memory isn't doing the trick and the pc is having to access the swap file for extra memory. Guess I will try that next.

One more note. I would be very careful about running that CleanUp program. I made a full backup before I did and I'm having to restore that backup now. CleanUp wiped out a lot of my registrations for apps I had installed. And now my registration codes will not work. It wiped out a lot of stuff...a little to much for me.