Initial Boot - excessive disk access

[Guest +Bob+]

When I booted today, my system was busy. Very busy. Didn't even finish

rendering the desktop icons. Drive light on full time. This lasted for

five minutes

 

So, I started procexp and took a look. Explorer itself seemed to be

sucking at least 20% of the CPU. It was the only program getting

significant CPU time.

 

The severe disk access was not showing up as reads or writes. There

was one csrss.exe and one svchost.exe process were steadily doing

repetitive IO, about one read every second each, but that continues

now and has no impact. They each took about 5% of CPU on and off.

 

Also, the svchost process had a sub/call running under it that was

"wu.....exe" that was identified as "windows automatic update process"

even though I have automatic updates shut off. But again, the IO was

limited to that one per second.

 

There did not appear to be any network access, at least there were no

connections showing in netstat beyond a couple shared drives that were

just hanging around.

 

So, what gives? what sucked up my CPU and drive access for so long?

And why didn't the disk access show up in procexp? Is this some sort

of behind the scenes access that MS intentionally or unintentionally

hides from any performance programs?

 

Thanks,

[Guest Patrick Keenan]

Re: Initial Boot - excessive disk access

 

"+Bob+" <uctraing@ultranet.com> wrote in message

news:rs6v54drpe5rffq440ji5h67emgoguf22k@4ax.com...

> When I booted today, my system was busy. Very busy. Didn't even finish

> rendering the desktop icons. Drive light on full time. This lasted for

> five minutes

>

> So, I started procexp and took a look. Explorer itself seemed to be

> sucking at least 20% of the CPU. It was the only program getting

> significant CPU time.

>

> The severe disk access was not showing up as reads or writes. There

> was one csrss.exe and one svchost.exe process were steadily doing

> repetitive IO, about one read every second each, but that continues

> now and has no impact. They each took about 5% of CPU on and off.

>

> Also, the svchost process had a sub/call running under it that was

> "wu.....exe" that was identified as "windows automatic update process"

> even though I have automatic updates shut off. But again, the IO was

> limited to that one per second.

>

> There did not appear to be any network access, at least there were no

> connections showing in netstat beyond a couple shared drives that were

> just hanging around.

>

> So, what gives? what sucked up my CPU and drive access for so long?

> And why didn't the disk access show up in procexp? Is this some sort

> of behind the scenes access that MS intentionally or unintentionally

> hides from any performance programs?

>

> Thanks,

 

Do you have indexing enabled?

 

-pk

[Guest +Bob+]

Re: Initial Boot - excessive disk access

 

On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:27:20 -0400, "Patrick Keenan" <test@dev.null>

wrote:

>"+Bob+" <uctraing@ultranet.com> wrote in message

>news:rs6v54drpe5rffq440ji5h67emgoguf22k@4ax.com...

>> When I booted today, my system was busy. Very busy. Didn't even finish

>> rendering the desktop icons. Drive light on full time. This lasted for

>> five minutes

>>

>> So, I started procexp and took a look. Explorer itself seemed to be

>> sucking at least 20% of the CPU. It was the only program getting

>> significant CPU time.

>>

>> The severe disk access was not showing up as reads or writes. There

>> was one csrss.exe and one svchost.exe process were steadily doing

>> repetitive IO, about one read every second each, but that continues

>> now and has no impact. They each took about 5% of CPU on and off.

>>

>> Also, the svchost process had a sub/call running under it that was

>> "wu.....exe" that was identified as "windows automatic update process"

>> even though I have automatic updates shut off. But again, the IO was

>> limited to that one per second.

>>

>> There did not appear to be any network access, at least there were no

>> connections showing in netstat beyond a couple shared drives that were

>> just hanging around.

>>

>> So, what gives? what sucked up my CPU and drive access for so long?

>> And why didn't the disk access show up in procexp? Is this some sort

>> of behind the scenes access that MS intentionally or unintentionally

>> hides from any performance programs?

>>

>> Thanks,

>

>Do you have indexing enabled?

>

No, it's shut off on all drives.

 

Problem happened again today. The "Windows Automatic Update" process

was again running even though I have automatic updates and update

checks disabled.

 

I killed the process and the drive activity stopped. I just went in

and disabled the process. I'll see if that cures the problem.