Windows Vista Hard drive spinning

My hard drive has started spinning 80% of the time, even when few or no programs are running. Windows Mail seems to instigate it often, but not always.

Whatever is using the hard drive is using 95% or more of my memory. I have checked for spool32 printer processes (been there, done that before) but none are running.

Does anyone know what this may be and more importantly, how to fix it?

Thanks in advance,

Camper

 

Hi and welcome to the BBS,

You might need more RAM. If you run "large" or RAM intensive programs or many ordinary programs, Vista will start putting anything it cannot fit into RAM into the pagefile on the HDD. That's why you are probably seeing that activity. Watch the readout for Page File (in Task Manager) when you have first started up after logon, then again after you have opened and started running your programs and if you might say, open lots of website pages (like I do ). Vista will utilise a lot of memory itself.

It might possibly be a checking program, like antivirus or antispyware checking files on the HDD, but that does not explain why the memory readout is so high.

Many programs will open in the background at startup, they may put an icon in the Notification Tray (where the time is), that could give you a guide to what is running.

Close down programs/activities that you are not using and see if it returns to normal.

Consider that you might need more RAM.

Matt