Hard Drive constantly writing

I recently upgraded from Win 98 to Win XP Pro.

Seems to run great except for 2 things

1. Takes an eternity to boot....sticks on the "Welcome" screen...with no activity for as long as 45 secs. then boots as normal. Interestingly if i CTRL + ALT + DEL at this point, it seems to wake the pc up and it continues as though nothing is wrong.

2. One of my hard drives is constantly writing something. System processes have indicated as much as 30% of CPU in use when the PC is sitting idle...with the hard drive writing.
the writing drive in general doesnt seem to slow my machine down but i'd like to know what its doing and why.

any tips would be greatly appreciated

thanks folks
David

 

Hello darich,

Sounds like it could be the indexing service, which does what it sounds like, organizing the files to make it easier to do searches, read, write, etc. Everything I've read about it, not worth much.

If you want to shut it off: start > type services.msc > scroll down to indexing > double click and in the drop down menu labeled "startup type ", click either manual or disabled.

The bootup slowness may be due to startups, apps and services.

To see what's necessary and what is not, look here http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.htm and here for XP services http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Regards - Charles

 

thanks Charles

I've done that but not rebooted yet so it's still churning away......but if i left it long enough....woudl it stop??...would it eventually get the files indexed the way it wants them??

cheers
David

 

Hi David,

"would it eventually get the files indexed the way it wants them?? "

Yes, that is supposed to happen. However, read posts on other forums about indexing that contradicts that. I've never had the service enabled, so can't tell you from personal experience if that happens and how long it would take.

So if you don't mind it, than wait and see and perhaps post back on the results.

The following is from my XP manual XP Inside/OUT by Ed Bott & Siechert:

quote
Using Indexing Service and Query Language

Created for and first delivered with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), Indexing Service is a feature originally designed to facilitate fast and flexible searches for information stored on Web sites. Because its query technology can be applied to ordinary disk storage as well as to Web sites, Indexing Service has become a core component of Windows (beginning with Windows 2000) and is integrated with Search Companion.

Indexing Service extends the power of Search Companion in several ways. First, it can speed up searching dramatically. How much performance gain you’ll see depends on many circumstances. But in tests for this book, we often found that content searches ran on the order of a hundred times faster with Indexing Service than without it.

Second, Indexing Service’s query language lets you find files on the basis of many different properties in addition to the size, date, and file type. With Indexing Service enabled, Search Companion can locate a file on the basis of word count, most recent editor, most recent printing time, and many other attributes.

In addition, the query language offers Boolean operators and the ability to find inflected forms of search strings. The Boolean operators allow you to specify more than one criterion in a search (all files written by Bill containing the words Windows XP, for example). The ability to find inflected word forms means that, for example, a search for swim will also show instances of swimming, swam, and swum.
end quote


Sorry if this is a little more than you want to know

Regards - Charles