Hard disk working even when inactive

I bought an Acer TM 6465 (2.0gHz Centrino Duo with 4MB Level 2 cache) a bit more than a month ago and to be honest, can't say that I'm too happy with it's performance (my husband bought exactly the same laptop - he does 3D drawings, etc - and is very happy with his!). I usually have about 5-7 applications open simultaneously while doing my work and on the previous laptop (1.83gHz TM 4102 Centrino with 2MB Level 2 cache) I could work hard for a whole day before it became necessary to reboot the computer to restore the memory. On this laptop, however, I can work at the same pace for only about 2 hours then the available memory drops to about 200-300MB (it has 2GB memory - we installed an extra 1GB) and then has to be rebooted. That's the one problem. The other problem is that - even while the system is idle - the hard drive is pulsed 1-2 times per second, with the result that the hard disk light comes on each time. When checking TaskManager the two processors show similar pulses varying between 4-10% in strength. Does anyone know what it is and / or what can be done to "fix" this problem? I read on this forum that it may be Acer eManager, but is it safe to remove?

SOFTWARE DETAILS: Adobe Web Premium 3 released May 2007 (Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver for website html/php programming, Flash, etc)

 

What OS are you using XP or Vista?

 

XP Professional

 

Are you using different programs vs the old computer? There's no reason why this certain computer will get bogged down a lot quicker than the other one requiring a reboot unless you're using different programs that are more memory intensive.

Have you done a clean install of the OS, or is this the same OS that came with the computer? Installing a fresh OS will be night and day vs the bloated OS that came originally.

 

Just newer versions of the same software (Adobe design, programming and photo editing software).

Incidentally, I found a few other independent sources that say it may be best to reinstall the OS. But it's such a hassle nowadays, isn't it? What with software activations ...

Back to the memory issue, though: the interesting thing is if the laptop is left to idle for an hour or two - with all the programs still running without rebooting it - the memory restores by itself to about 1.2-1.3GB. The biggest worry, however, is the fact that some background process(es) keeps working on the hard disk the whole time. It makes the "ggrrr" sound 1-2 times per second. Call me stupid, but sometimes I miss the simplicity of the old DOS operating system!

 

Well then either you're programs are way too demanding for your low end hardware, or you got some stupid program/spyware taking up your computer's resources. Can you tell us what sort of processes you have going in the background, maybe you have some AV or whatnot scheduled to update or scan all the time thus accessing the hard drive alot.

I remember working on my mom's work computer, and they had very tight security for obvious reasons, so there were a whole bunch of AV and antispyware software that would scan the computer basically 24/7 and run and update every few minutes. That surely is taxing on the drive and other resources.

 

Norton Antivirus 2006 may be a contributing factor, but when running Task Manager it only runs every now and again.

I suspect, however, that it may be Acer's eManager (ePower_DMC.exe) itself that is the biggest culprit. c.hilding wrote elsewhere on this forum that "This process accesses the registry a whopping 4000 times per second! It also uses between 1 and 15% of CPU!" and when running Filemon it definitely is one of the most active processes. It really is irritating -- and worrying -- when the hard disk "grr"'s every second. Is it safe to uninstall eManager? Any suggestions from anyone?

 

I think many many of the people on this forum have uninstalled all the eManager and all that software. all those kinds of things are pretty useless. and they eat up system resources. altho, now I don't have the nice green letters that pop up to tell me what level my sound is at, to notify me when i enable/disable the wifi and such.

I would suggest you do a format/reinstall of the OS.

 

For several years I have been using a program called "Tune Up Utilities": http://www.tune-up.com/ and one of the many features allows you to easily select what start up programs you want to not have running. It's amazing how many processes are wanting to start & though you can use msconfig to do this, I find T.U.U. to be slick. It does a fine job of looking for errors in the registry & orphaned pointers & the like. If you don't want to uninstall a program but do want to stop it from running, this is your simplest option. The website says the trial is good for 30 days.

I'm just an end user but this is one program I wouldn't be without, it's been a big help in several ways.