frequent short disk activity at idle

Hi all,

Looks like a good place to be !

I have a Sony Vaio Z600Re laptop with 128mb Ram & 11Gb disk which I just bought secondhand. Machine all checks out OK. It was installed with Win98 and a few basic utilities. I decided that I would upgrade to Win 2000 for stability, which appeared to go smoothly.

I noticed that when the unit is sitting idle it tends to do very regular, very short disk accesses (from what I could see in task manager). I find it very annoying with the machine just sitting clicking away every few seconds - a bit like water torture !

I disabled the indexing service, have no anti virus software installed, all the correct Sony W2k drivers, SP3 and all fixes applied. I have Office premium 2000 plus some other basic software installed, but essentially it is a fairly cleane and unused installation.

When I first disabled indexing it appeared to cut the problem right down, but a reboot cured that.

Anyone got any bright ideas as to what to look for ?

B. Rgds
John

 

It sounds like you have some service trying and failing to start or do some job. Hard to say exactly what but if you'll post a list of yours and their status, we can take a shot at figuring out which is the guilty party. Pain to generate the list but -

And to clarify, I gather that your PC is not on a network or any sort of broadband internet connection.

No need for all the service information. Basically the parts I've listed from my PC. And from this short list, the w32time will do as you describe but not nearly that often. Once a day for a few seconds usually. Others will try lots more frequently.

Name..........Description........Status...Type.......Startup
Alerter.......Alerter............Stopped..Service....Manual
....
Browser.......Computer Browser...Stopped..Service....Disabled
...
CryptSvc......Cryptographic Svc..Running..Service....Automatic
Dhcp..........DHCP Client........Running..Service....Automatic
....
lanmanserver..Server.............Running..Service....Automatic
LmHosts.......TCP/IP NetBT.......Running..Service....Automatic
.....
w32time.......Windows Time.......Running..Service....Automatic
WebClient.....WebClient..........Running..Service....Automatic
.....

 

Thanks Newt.

I'll go have a look through tonight and see what turns up. I guessed it is a service, but wasn't sure whether it would be an easy thing to spot or not.

I'll check out the services running and the error log to see if anything is dying.

The machine has been on a ethernet network, and also does dialup, but I did disable networking and it still did it. I'll check through that again though.

B. Rgds
John

 

ReeTp

After you complete the expert advice from Newt I highly advise that you get a Virus scanner.

A virus can cause the same symptoms and worse.

I personally don't like Norton or Mcafee.

I think the best free Scanner is AVG: http://www.grisoft.com/html/us_index.htm

Since it has been on a network and dialup now without a scanner do a scan also with these hotfix specialty scanners:

Stinger http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

PQremove http://www.webmasterfree.com/software/2911.html

The above 2 programs look only for the most prolific currently active viri. Run them before installing AVG. Then do a full AVG scan.

Ok Virus scanning out of the way!

Spy/Adware can also cause this.

So here are the cleaners for those. Absolutely imperitive that you run SpyBot first, and twice, then Adaware.


Spyware and adware removal

SpyBot http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download

Adaware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/downloads.html

Good luck.

Mike

 

Thanks Mike.

It did have AV on it, but it was out of date. I was about to install a differerent and updated version. Will check out the spyware too.

Will report back once I have done some homework on it !


B. Rgds
John

 

If it had norton on it it needs to be removed completely before reinstall. Add/remove of norton does not do it. Norton has a cleanup tool just for this.

Should be cleaned even and especially if norton is not going back on.

Mike

 

Wouldn't put Norton AV within a hundred miles of any of my machines.... it would go in the bit bucket along with AOL



B. Rgds
John

 

10-4 to that.

But if this came from a someone else "you said a Lan" they could have had it on but uninstalled it before you took machine over.

mike

Try AVG everyone likes it!

 

Sorry - probably confusing U a bit.

Got the unit with Win 98 on it originally inc. some out of date AV stuff. Not sure whether it had been on a LAN at that stage in it's life or not. Can't remember what was in the settings.

I ripped out the old AV, and ran W2k SP1 upgrade. It was then that I noticed the disk flicking away. I added in networking for my own purposes, although I have disabled it for testing purposes. I hooked into my brothers network to download SP3 and all the fixes. I could take it out completely if necessary - will try that tonight.

However, the flicking started as soon as I had upgraded - I never noticed it in 98.

Added 128mb RAM to take it to 256 (maximum you can install) to no avail - thought that it might have been paging a lot.

Could be a virus or spyware, but the machine was pretty clean from what I could see.

Hope that makes sense.

B. Rgds
John

 

Hi all,

had a quick look last night - nothing apparently virii related, but I noticed some errors relating to (I think from memory) i8046prt which having looked about is something keyboard / PS2.

Having had a bit of a think about this, I am going to rip the lot out and do a fresh install of 2000 rather than the upgrade over 98.

Any suggstions appreciated. WIll keep you posted on developments.

B. Rgds
John

 

Reinstall windows for this?

Probably will (all most for sure won't) not fix it anyway.

Try this first!

Go to safe mode. The device manager and remove the keyboard.

Then clear the event logs (save if you want) this will give a clear slate so that we can look at the fresh event logs immediately on full reboot. We should then only see items from last boot. Ignore the warning about safe mode.

It should reinstall the Keyboard on its way back up. After the keyboard is reinstalled you probably should save the logs and clear once more then reboot again and immediatelly recheck the logs.

Now see if still have the disk activity and any errors pertaining to keyboard.

If you do, you need to go to the site for this motherboard and d/l the m/b chipset update.

I believe you said the BIOS had been flashed to the newest ver.

Mike

 

Hi Mike,

thanks for the reply. Will try as suggested and see what happens. Yes, the BIOS is the latest - I checked it. Also, all the drivers were the latest from Sony, and I even made sure I followed their upgrade instructions to the letter (probably a bad idea!)

The only reason I was thinking about a clean install was that the install I did was over a previous 98 installation - not always the most succesful activity from experience.

Just thought that a totally clean installation might be better in the long run. As I have done no serious work on the unit yet, it won't take long and I won't lose anything. I'll try and find the problem first.

B. Rgds
John

 

Ok! Then I see your point! About the clean install.

I have upgraded win98 many times with 2k and XP with no bad results. And that is my 1st choice if the win98 machine has a lot of complex sw and settings and personalizations.

But I am a fanantic about the win98 being clean of viri spyware and not errors in device mng. Or even any unknown errors like page faults or invalid Op codes.

Then I uninstall all unnessesary sw and stop all virus scanners, firewalls and other startups. Only then do I upgrade.

It does save much time in finding all the sw etc. So I actually reccomend it if done properly as described above.

Most problems coming from an upgrade are because of the things mentioned above.

If I can't fix these things first then I don't upgrade.

So garbage in garbage out.

Mike

 

HI Mike,

Sorry about not getting back for a while - I have been working ny socks off and haven't had time to play.

I have basically run through all the things I can think of - disabled every service I can find etc etc and no joy.

The only thing that shows regularly as an errro in the logs is a i8042prt error, although it doesn't seem to be related time wise to the disk activity. From what I have read this is purely a timeout whilst the machine hunts for a ps2 keyboard.

I am currently typing away on the machine and after a period of activity, it settles down to just an occasional look.

The thing is that the sounds it makes are diffent from a normal burst of disk activity. Rather than a sort of 'zzzzzzz' sound you normally get, it does a sort of short 'click-plop' sound. From experience, it doesn't dound like the disk dying though. More like the disk heads being 'parked'. I di wondr if it was power related, but it seems to be the same whether on batteries or not.

The biggest pain is that it's like dripping water when it is quiet !

I think that I will probably do a clean install and see what happens. I'll post any developments or cures.

B. Rgds
John