HO Pavillion DV6458SE

We are senior citizens and just received a HP notebook with Vista Home Premium. We have always been using WinXPsp2 and this Vista is quite a change for us.

We notice when we turn on the HP notebook, the little 'blue' hard drive light (front on notebook, lower left) stays on for about one-two minutes after the Windows desktop screen is showing. Then it turns off and starts blinking occassionally.
Should it (the hard drive light) stay on for about one-two minutes after the Vista program opens? I don't remember the WinXPsp2 hard drive light staying on that long. (It is connected to wireless.)

We were thinking maybe the Vista has a lot more programs to load upon start-up, etc.

Can anyone ease our minds that we do not have a defective (new) notebook? Please advise.

 

Yes, its most likely just startup programs, services loading up at startup. It might also be the search indexer indexing your hard drive faster search results.

 

Thanks. So there is nothing wrong with our HP Presario(Vista Premium; 2GB ram; 160GB Hard Drive) which we just received?

Also, can you explain your "It might also be the search indexer indexing your hard drive faster search results?"

 

Your system should be fine. Vista is generally more demanding on the hardware than XP. The search indexer basically indexes the files on your hard drive and stores them. The next time you search(through the start menu) your results will be displayed almost instantaneously. This has been much improved over the search tool in XP. But in order to deliver faster search Vista has to first index the files on your hard drive. So initially when the system is new you will notice increased hard drive activity for a few weeks.

 

Thanks again. You said "So initially when the system is new you will notice increased hard drive activity for a few weeks."
Do you mean that after a while, when we turn on our HP Pavillion, and we see the Vista screen, the HD (blue) light will not stay lit for 2-3 minutes before it turns off? Or will the HD lite always stay lit (ON) for 2-3 minutes after we see the Vista screen?
(Sorry for all the questions, but we are so very new at all of this and did spend quite a bit of money for this new HP Pavillion DV6458SE, and want to be sure we didn't buy a 'bad' notebook.)

 

Well, yes and no. You should see reduced HD activity but even without the indexer the system still has to load services and programs set to run at startup. So you will still see some HD activity. But 1 or 2 minutes is pretty normal for Vista, I would be worried if it continued for more than 3 or 5 minutes, then it might be a cause for concern.

 

Hi:
I've had my HP Pavillion DV6458SE for a little over a week now and I still notice the HDD (blue) light on front of computer remains on anywhere from 2-5 minutes after the Vista desktop screen comes up.
Does anyone else own a HP Pavillion DV6458SE and notice the HDD (blue) light remains on (not blinking/flickering on/off) for a fairly long time after the Vista screen desktop comes up?
I went into the BIOS and did a "Hard Drive Self Test" and the three tests came back as PASSED.
Our HP has 160GB hard drive and 2GB Ram, Vista Home Premium, (pre-installed) NIS 2007 and IE7.
Someone I know said they have a HP notebook and they notice also that their HDD (blue) light remains on for about 3 minutes (or longer) after the Vista screen comes up.
I am doing a Defrag now and it has been running (so far) for 65 minutes.

I would just like to know if other owners of the HP Pavillion DV6458SE see the same thing happening with the HDD (blue) light. And if you had same thing happening, did you do anything to corrent (disable some start-up programs, etc.)? We are completely computer illiterate and that is why it is causing a bit of anxiety. (We contacted HP via email and they said "don't worry about it." and, "if you want to set your mind at ease, run a HD Self Test" Which we did.)

It is just a bit annoying waiting waiting for the light to go out as our WinXPsp2notebook's HDD light goes out about a few seconds.