Constant Hard Drive Noise on TZ

Hello,

I bought a TZ for my mother thinking it would help her deal with her world of pain and agony (thousands of mails), but this idea is turning out into a big headache.

I worked on PC a few years ago, but now I mostly work on macs. However I am still pretty handy with PCs.

First impression: the computer is painfully slow! Even slower than her 4 years old ultra portable which was EXTREMELY slow! I was terrified.

The hard drive is always accessing! The small orange diode is always on and it is driving me mad with its small grinding noise.

I did a Semi Clean install explained here in these forums. The problem seemed gone for 10 minutes before I had to install all the drivers, and some vital Vaio programs (Power Management mostly) in the Vaio Recovery program.

Even when I kill all the running processes with the Task manager the noise is still there.

However, when I boot in Safe Mode: no noise! Only the occasionnal HD access.

I even upgraded the Ram to 2 GB thinking it would do it but, though the computer is faster, the noise is still there.

Any ideas? Should I call a priest or something?

 

The first time you get Vista, it will be constantly accessing the hard drive, "indexing" the files to make searching for them easier, very annoying and pretty useless.

Vista is a resource-hog and Sony puts a lot of bloatware to really slow the lower end TZ models down (with 4200rpm HDD, not SSD). Good thing to do is a clean install of Vista or the absolute best bet, go to Windows XP, I did it in the first few hours of buying my machine, didn't even try out Vista. Its much leaner and can do just about everything Vista can do.

The HDD is only on when I'm obviously putting it to work, otherwise, mostly silent.

We should call a priest to cast out the abomination that is Vista, pour some holy water on this demon.

 

There's a number of things you can do to turn down hard disk activity.

Before I start, I'd REALLY recommend a full clean install.

First, you can turn off System Restore. There are pros and cons involved of course, but for me the pros outweigh the cons as I make DVD back-ups from time to time instead of having my system constantly doing so on the HDD.

Second, you can turn off the Vista Indexing feature by going to Start -> Computer -> Drive C: -> Properties and uncheck "Index this drive for faster searching." IIRC, there's another way to do this. Definitely have a look at the Vista tweaking guide.

Third, I'd have a look at www.blackviper.com and try going through his list of services (Type services.msc in Start) and eliminating services you probably don't need. Start off with his Safe checklist as the Tweaked disables a lot of stuff that might be important.


I'm not sure what your definition of slow is. My TZ150 on Vista cold boots in under 40 seconds and everything is just eerily snappy considering how much flap people give the slow 4200 RM HDDs... good that you updated your RAM though! So basically I'd advise you go to the Vista tweak thread and go through all the recommendations, THEN if you want to take it another step forward, go into disabling services.

Here's the link to the vista tweaks thread here on the forum:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

Black Viper Service Tweaks Guide:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

Also I'm glad I posted before |SONY|'s overly redundant "ditch Vista" comment.

 

Wow I don't know what to say. Thank you guys for these helpful answers its much appreciated.

I did a mix of everything I heard around here, replaced Windows' search with Google Destop, and everything is quiet and snappy now.

I would have installed XP...but I just did a full install and i'm just not that young anymore

 

Tweaks available below if you want...

 

Ditch Vista. That's the best advice you will get on these forums

 

Turn off windows automatic updates and do it manually.

 

what the AU has anything to do it with. It is fast indexing and doing all kinds of dumb sh&t.

Ditch Vista.

 

You're sounding like a broken record and bordering on spamming every thread with "Ditch Vista." You don't like Vista. We get that already.

 

That's not the point. Once you ditch vista, then my mission will be completed.

You got problems with my spamming? Tell me what is the point of your message Die? It is as much spam as mine... UNFORTUNATELY.... kids.

 

Do the tweaks, my vista runs great, no hdd seeking... i do have indexing turned off

 

Your ditch vista posts are spam because you don't expand on them. All you say is Ditch Vista. Distch Vista. I'm getting tired of clicking on a thread and seeing a post from you, sometimes having nothing to do with the point of the thread, saying to "ditch vista." My message is to let you know you can't force people to switch away from Vista.

This is getting off topic and I won't play your back and forth Spam Game |SONY| you want me to play with you by contributing nothing to this thread, Name calling ("Kids") shows your true colors. This is my response. I am sure you're going to respond with another inflammatory response as you just did, but I have no time to play back and fofth games with you and resort to name calling on the Internet.

 

Die, get lost.

 

I have been asking for clarification, without getting any explanation.

Infraction given for insult.

Please keep to the topic under discussion.

John

 

Thanks John. You are one great nanny and I mean it...

 

yeah, lets not clog up this thread.
so, can someone summarize and even make a faq on solving hdd noise issue.., cos this kind of bug also persists on SZ's.

 

We really need to get some FAQs and sticky threads in our beloved Sony forum ASAP. I may like to do it.

 

It is. Turning off AU stops the hard drive grinding for several minutes (svchost for AU consuming 50-100% cpu) immediately after start up.

You should be ditching windows xp soon as it's support will end in 2009.
Do you want to go back in time?. Then switch to XP. Nobody would want to go back to 2001.

 

*finger crosssed*

Just expressing my experience and opinion here

I did a P1 clean install, and did not modify anything, except a few small tweaks, such as the 400 ms menu delay, start up items, etc. I did not tinker with the services, windows defender, firewall, etc. at all. It runs fine now. In the past, when I tried disabling services (carefully--followed a few guides), Vista would have crashed from time to time, and it even went to Blue Screen once.

I, personally, like the Vista indexing system. I even added the program folder into it. It makes accessing things much faster and easier, because I just need to hit the windows key, and type the name of the program or just a part of its name, instead of using the cursor to find the programs.

 

what is au???

 

I think he means Automatic Updates

Why does it help turning off these? I don't realy think so is so important.