Random file access on hard drive

[KingA21]

About a week ago, my hard drive started having this problem. It randomly starts accessing the hard drive even if I'm not doing anything. The HDD LED light lights up and I can hear the harddrive being accessed. It just recently started doing this and I don't remember installing anything @ the time it started happening. Also, when I logout of the account w/ the problem and I log into a different account, the problem goes away. I've ran antivirus and spyware software to get rid of any potential conflicts, but I still have the problem. Has anyone else had this problem? And is there any software that I can get that will allow me to see what files/folders are being accessed while it goes into its frenzy? Thanks.

 

[KingA21]

The computer tends to freeze for a few seconds as well when it starts to randomly access files.

 

[Dahak]

By the sound of it there is some software that is accessing the harddrive, and it is a per user setting as it does not happen to another account. The only thing I can suggest is to try a spyware scan again, and uses different software as everyone finds something different. I use Ad-Adware SE, Spybot Search and Destroy and Microsofts Antispyware. The other thing to do is after installed and updated, run the scan in safe mode as well

 

[KingA21]

Does anyone know of any software that will allow me to see what files or folders are being accessed when the hard drive is accessing those files?

 

[Monkey muppet]

Originally posted by: KingA21
Does anyone know of any software that will allow me to see what files or folders are being accessed when the hard drive is accessing those files?

Run the management console and open the Performance screen - have a watch at the Pages/sec.

"......Pages/sec is the rate at which pages are read from or written to disk to resolve hard page faults. This counter is a primary indicator of the kinds of faults that cause system-wide delays....."

The other thing it could be is the amount of physical available, (caused by Windows memory leaks??), this results in the swop file having to be accessed more often - Hence HDD activity

 

[fishmonger12]

sounds a lot like a spyware issue. you could run a hard drive diagnostic if you wanted

 

[KingA21]

Looking @ the management console, it seems that the memory Pages/Sec spikes up to 100, then a second later, the Avg. Disk Queue Length spikes up to 100 as well.

But I'm still unsure what files it's accessing. If it were bad memory, I'd expect the computer to have the same symptoms in the other accounts, which it does not. I'll try running more scans for spyware later on today, but I've already run several scans.

If anyone has any more useful, lemme know, thanks.

 

[Monkey muppet]

A couple of question, if you don't mind:

How much RAM do you have, how much is free?
How big is your swop file?
How many processes are you running?

 

[muppet]

if it only happens on your account when logged in, then it aint RAM problems.
see what loads up in your user profile when logging in, see what programs are running in background
if possible log in as another user with admin rights and remove your user profile from screen. this is the quickest and easiest way

 

[Monkey muppet]

Originally posted by: muppet
if it only happens on your account when logged in, then it aint RAM problems.
see what loads up in your user profile when logging in, see what programs are running in background
if possible log in as another user with admin rights and remove your user profile from screen. this is the quickest and easiest way

My line of thinking would be a certian program being loaded up and hogging the resources. Different profiles will have different programs loaded up