Vista is hammering the drive all the time over Outlook

Why is Vista hammering the drive about Outlook?
Yes, Outlook is in cached mode from the exchange server BUT Outlook is not even running.
It's clearly not doing a sync, because when I start Outlook it does the sync then.
I kill the task and in less than a minute it restarts.

Indexing is off.

It does this constantly.
Only way to stop it is to turn the machine off.
Very annoying, machine should be sitting on my desk quietly and it's going bananas.

 

Under the assumption that Vista is trying to genuinly do something (no malware).

A few datails maybe important:
Version of Outlook
Size of your Outllok file - it may be an idea to create an Archive an to then optimize the data file

 

I'm running AVG and Defender, this lappy isn't my main machine so I don't surf that much with it. Doubt it's 'infected' I think this is just some task Vista is doing.

Outlook is '03, cache size is a monster = 6+gb

I've tried archiving in the past, doesn't fit well with how I work where I need to be able to search for a customer's records and get everything without having to do multiple searches.

 

"kill the task"... What task would that be? Servicehost.exe? That is not really the task/service, it is the "container". Servicehost is a, shall we say generic app, that houses one or more of the services that applications or Vista itself use on your machine. (That is oversimplified but gives you the gist of it.) You need to drill down and find out what actual service is doing this. To do so grab a copy of Sysinternals Process Explorer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx. With that you can select the servicehost.exe task and then double click it to reveal the actual service or services that instance of servicehost is housing.

I think you will find that Outlook IS running. Not the user interface portion but some of the other parts. But you'll be able to find out. I really doubt if it is "Vista hammering the drive about Outlook". I think you'll find it to be something besides Vista itself.

Gary

 

I find a very annoying part of vista is that it's constantly beating the hell out of the drive over something.

It should be sitting quietly on my desk doing nothing and it's always wailing on the drive about something.

I'd like to turn the task scheduler off completely as that would probably help, but this isn't possible in Vista.

 

My instance of Vista is most assuredly not constantly beating the hard drive and I have indexing, superfetch and pagefile all turned on. Those are all some of the things some folks will try to tell you cause Vista to beat on the hard drive. They don't.

Your "solution" of turning off the task scheduler is a bit of overkill, when in reality what you really want it to rein in whatever IS beating on the drive. Taking a shot gun approach like that isn't the solution. Gaining data about the source is. Get Process Explorer and find out what is doing this. Then I feel certain one of us here can help you get a handle on this.

Gary

 

Try archiving your e-mails then optimize the Outlook file - if that is available in 03.

Archiving is.

Vista may be trying to optimze your Outlook file.

 

a) is outlook or the host OS doing any kind of indexing?
b) is the host OS doing a 'constant' defrag or optimization of file placement?
c) how big is the mailcache file and how much free space is available on the hard drive?
d) is the host OS running a constant 'on-access' anti-virus process?
e) is there any way for you to cut down the size of the mailcache file? There are a few new utilities (from Nirsoft among others) that can strip attachments out of an outlook mailcache and save them 'elsewhere'.

 

Archiving is available in Outlook '03.

 

The OP said archiving is not an option they could use. They need all of the items in the main OST to facilitate searches in a single spot for past customer interaction.

Gary

 

Which is a damned good reason for the OP to investigate buying or building a conduit between Outlook and Access to capture and store client information.

 

Doesn't the Details tab under each Contact facilitate as a single spot that searches for all past customer interactions, regardless if the email is under personal folders or under archived folders?

 

Good question. I have no clue. I don't use the built in archive function. I archive things myself with an offline PST.

But so far we still don't know what service was actually hammering the hard drive. We need to get to the bottom of that before a solution can really be determined.

Now you have me curious about the details tab thing. Do you know if it does work as you suggest?

Gary

 

I see part of the problem why Vista is such a dog.

Task scheduler is totally full of tasks that run every day, some of them run every time it's started. No wonder it takes forever to boot = at least 3 times longer than XP on the same machine.

And of course, I can't edit any of these either.

Really wish Gates & Co would stop deciding they know better how to run this machine than the users.

There's a few things I really like about Vista, but there's some other stuff I really despise.

It's more than just clients, it's vendors, dealers, suppliers, jobshops, lawyers, advertising, nerds and everything else that it takes to run a biz.

Archiving makes it a pita to do searches.

I suppose if we wanted every single person to have a contact.
Of course, then we'd have 4 bazillion contacts and my contact list would be very cluttered.

 

So do you want to complain about it or do you want to find a solution? All of the task scheduler stuff is editable. And all of those same sort of things existed in XP, just not always done with the task scheduler. XP had a lot of things that ran every time you booted the machine. These are not new to Vista. What is new is that they are fully exposed to examination via the Task Scheduler. In XP they were hidden, so you never knew they existed.

First, if you want to find a solution to whatever is hitting the hard drive you have to first find out WHAT is hitting the hard drive. As I told you before, the service host task is NOT what is hitting the drive. One of the services it houses is. I also gave you info on how to find out specifically what service. You need to do that, or you will be just shooting in the dark with possible "solutions".

Second, there is a real good likelihood that your boot files need to be defragmented leading to the slow boot times you are talking about. Because of the way most users run their laptops, the automatic process for doing this in Vista never gets a chance to kick in. If you want to read the details of this or you want to know how to force this process to run and defrag the boot files, look at the link in my signature below. If you try this, be sure to follow the directions carefully, close all other apps, let the task run to completion etc.

All of the suggestions that archiving is a solution for your problem, ignore two things. First, it would make your life hell trying to do searches. (Although I am intrigued by the idea that a details search via a contact might also search the archived stuff. And I understand your issue with the contact list being huge if you wanted to implement this, but that can be mitigated by using the Contact categories functionality. However, all of that is getting the cart before the horse because...) Second and more important, we have no idea what is hitting the drive, so we have no idea if archiving would affect this as yet unknown service.

Gary

 

Once you get your Outlook stuff working again you'd be well served by a concerted effort to set your business up properly.

One of these days you WILL have a complete failure and loss of data.

 

Is this XP machine running the same apps and tasks as your current Vista machine?

Maintaining a database is not small stuff for system performance, I personally like to see that my drive being hammered and updated efficiently rather than losing records update.

cheers ...

 

what are you talking about?
Outlook is is working fine, we operate an exchange server which runs backups. The risk of data loss is small.
What do you mean by setting my my business properly? I don't think you know what you are talking about.

I think maybe you didn't read the post and are off on some other subject.


Yes, I am looking to solve this. I used the explorer program suggested. Seems to be good info in there, but it's a little hard to match the data. Still digging...


As to XP/Vista. The machine dual boots. XP starts and shuts down 3-5x faster. Numerous tests prove this. Most apps seem to run about the same speed, but under XP they always start faster.

 

TrickHP,

In process explorer, find the instance of svchost.exe that is causing the problem. Then double click on that instance. In the dialog that pops up, switch to the services tab. Voilà. There is the list of services that are hosted in that instance of svchost.

Regarding the boot time of Vista. Like I said before I am willing to bet that the issue is fragmented boot files. I stripped out almost a minute of boot time, when I defragged mine. Other folks have reported similar results. Not everyone mind you, but enough to make it worth the minimal effort needed. (BTW the ones who didn't see any improvement, had a usage pattern that allowed the automatic defrag to kick in by itself.)

Gary