What is XP doing? [Hard Drive Activity]

Does anyone have any ideas as to what XP could be doing that causes HD activity???

When I leave my computer idle for about 15-30 minutes (connected to the internet or not) I notice that my HD becomes active... The screensavers are not activated, and I know my system is clean from virii, spyware and adware.

I keep thinking that maybe XP is defragmenting on its own, but I don't know if thats possible, and I don't use the Task Scheduler, everything is done manually by me.

It constantly does this, so its just not a once or twice a month thing. Besides I defragment once aweek.

I've checked all settings and can find nothing that would cause XP to start doing anything.

I checked the Windows Task Manager to see what could possibly be running but it always shows nothing except for example right now "Internet Explorer and my Internet Connection.

Any ideas would be appreciated greatly....

 

It is and XP does and I'm betting that you got it in one.

If you want to pin it down for sure, http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml and download a few of their monitoring tools. Filemon and Diskmon for sure and there are a couple others that may be of interest.

 

Newt,

I downloaded both "Filemon and Diskmon" and a will check many of the other utils listed....Great Link....very useful...

I'll let you know how this works out....

 

Good deal.

And speaking from some years of experience with their utilities, the stuff is all rock solid and effective.

 

Hello Omega,

If Task Schedular is not enabled, then XP is not defragmenting on it's own. AFAIK, TS has to be enabled for XP's auto defrag. Is the service enabled, even though you don't use it?

Another posssibilty is the Indexing Service, on some systems, been known to cause the kind of activity you describe.

Regards - Charles