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Hard Drive activity


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Posted

Is it normal for the hard drive to be constantly active? While looking at a

web page, without clicking any links, I notice that the hard drive light is

continually flashing. I also noticed that the CPU usage went as high as 50%

when I was simply viewing a web page. What might be the cause of this? I ran

a virus scan with NOD 32 and it came up empty.

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Guest Unknown
Posted

Re: Hard Drive activity

 

Look in task manager to see what is running.

"the K" <theK@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:645162A5-BE48-4ADE-BB73-810004720FAB@microsoft.com...

> Is it normal for the hard drive to be constantly active? While looking at

> a

> web page, without clicking any links, I notice that the hard drive light

> is

> continually flashing. I also noticed that the CPU usage went as high as

> 50%

> when I was simply viewing a web page. What might be the cause of this? I

> ran

> a virus scan with NOD 32 and it came up empty.

Posted

Re: Hard Drive activity

 

For instance when all I have running is Mozilla and I'm not downloading,the

Process Monitor application shows numerous read/write attempts by:

winlogon.exe

lsass.exe

firefox.exe

sqlmangr.exe.

 

Can anyone explain why these application are running when all I'm doing is

viewing a web page?

 

"Unknown" wrote:

> Look in task manager to see what is running.

> "the K" <theK@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

> news:645162A5-BE48-4ADE-BB73-810004720FAB@microsoft.com...

> > Is it normal for the hard drive to be constantly active? While looking at

> > a

> > web page, without clicking any links, I notice that the hard drive light

> > is

> > continually flashing. I also noticed that the CPU usage went as high as

> > 50%

> > when I was simply viewing a web page. What might be the cause of this? I

> > ran

> > a virus scan with NOD 32 and it came up empty.

>

>

>

Guest Twayne
Posted

Re: Hard Drive activity

 

> Is it normal for the hard drive to be constantly active? While

> looking at a web page, without clicking any links, I notice that the

> hard drive light is continually flashing. I also noticed that the

> CPU usage went as high as 50% when I was simply viewing a web page.

> What might be the cause of this? I ran a virus scan with NOD 32 and

> it came up empty.

 

It's probably normal; hard to say for sure since we can't see your

computer from here. It could be one of many background tasks ranging

from file indexing to antivirus to malware scanners to ... you name it.

YOu're the one who knows what you have running. Or you should, anyway.

 

I would suggest however that you look into some security research for

your PC. Microsoft has some good articles as do some of the participants

right here on this group. Peraps someone will chime in with a list for

you if you ask. Or, since I mentioned it.

NOD32, while good, is not anywhere near all you need to protect your

machine. Or just look back thru old threads here for posts on the

subject; there are lots of them. If all you have is NOD32, you have the

basics, but you are still woefully unprotected from many things on the

'net.

 

HTH

Posted

Re: Hard Drive activity

 

=?Utf-8?B?dGhlIEs=?= wrote:

>

> Is it normal for the hard drive to be constantly active? While looking at a

 

Not unless you have installed a program that is continually has to

access it. Can be as simple as a printer update app.

 

 

--

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Guest Alec S.
Posted

Re: Hard Drive activity

 

the K wrote (in news:79A0D389-8933-4887-959D-47F87A610964@microsoft.com):

> For instance when all I have running is Mozilla and I'm not downloading,the

> Process Monitor application shows numerous read/write attempts by:

> winlogon.exe

> lsass.exe

> firefox.exe

> sqlmangr.exe.

>

> Can anyone explain why these application are running when all I'm doing is

> viewing a web page?

 

Sounds normal enough. First of all, there will pretty much always be continual

file access, even with a system that is completely idle.

 

Second, 50% CPU usage is normal when viewing a web page unless you are viewing

pages from 10 years ago. Any pages from these days, especially Web 2.0 type

pages (YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.) will use JavaScript, Flash, etc. which use up

CPU cycles. Even just rendering today’s pages takes up CPU cycles. FireFox gets

quite nasty once you start adding extensions to make it useful; I’ve seen it

suck cycles often. Even without extensions it will check for updates and such.

 

Finally, I would suspect that sqlmangr.exe is responsible for some of the CPU

and disk usage. It sounds like you don’t even know about the SQL Server Service

Manager running on your system. Why is it running? Are you running a web server

or something? I don’t believe that it even comes with Windows (I doubt that it

is part of the IIS or PWS). You may want to turn it off.

 

(The other two are system processes and will have file access; that’s to be

expected, unless they have /massive/ file access when the system is supposed to

be idling.)

 

 

HTH

 

--

Alec S.

news/alec->synetech/cjb/net

 

 

> > > Is it normal for the hard drive to be constantly active? While looking at

a

> > > web page, without clicking any links, I notice that the hard drive light

is

> > > continually flashing. I also noticed that the CPU usage went as high as

50%

> > > when I was simply viewing a web page. What might be the cause of this? I

ran

> > > a virus scan with NOD 32 and it came up empty.


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