something's constantly writing, and it is not indexing

So, something is constantly writing on the disk, and it's driving me mad... Please help me if you can:

The HDD led blinks app. every 1.5 secs, signalizing that something is being written. When i go to the task manager, i see that these three processes are writing:

lsass.exe
winlogon.exe
avgwdsvc.exe (antivirus watchdog service... the situation will not change after uninstalling the AV, so that i cannot blame this one)

It is not indexing (i've tested the situation with indexing disabled both in the disk settings and in the services), it is not the system restore thing (i've tried to disable it too).

Edit to add: i've also tried to switch off hibernating (no change), and also killing all processes one by one till only the essential stayed (and killing anything more would shut down the OS), but nothing changed.

I tried the process monitor to find out more, but it won't reveal any useful data for me as i'm not used to work with this utility... But in case that it helps, i'm gonna pin the output as an attachment.

I was searching this forum, googling too, but nothing which could help was found - in other cases, it was usually the indexing services.

Any ideas please?

 

do you have enough memory?

 

yes, it is 2GB RAM (see specs in the signature), it actually won't eat CPU, it *only* writes...

 

I have the same issue, never figured it out...

 

thanks I♥RAM, good that i don't feel alone, anyway... let's try to find a solution

which steps did you try to solve that issue? so that i don't waste time with them... i'll try to find something in your earlier posts here at NBR, in case that it is there.

right now i'm downloading all optional windows updates, just in case... (all the important ones are downloaded & installed of course). but somehow i don't believe that it would help...

edit: okay, i did it, waited for the new searchindexer to finish it's job... and no change at all, the led blinks as before, same processes are writing. i must have done something really ugly in my previous life... or to my previous laptop :confused2:

 

Unless you've got some quite unusual hardware there, that LED will light up for *any* disk activity (both reads and writes).

As for Process Monitor, turn off "Show Registry Activity" and "Show Process and Thread Activity" on the toolbar. You can reduce the output further by filtering (CTRL+L) for specific operations (e.g. ReadFile, WriteFile).

 

thanks Nebelwand, well when i adjust the process monitor as you suggested, i can see only this regular attempt - the AV watchdog service reading following file:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Data aplikací\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk\rasphone.pbk

(Data aplikací = Application Data, non-english windows)

but, as i said, uninstalling the antivirus completely (!) would not change the situation, the disk is constantly accessed and the fan is constantly on (as i probably forgot to mention), which is definitely not normal...

edit: both this and c:\autoexec.bat which are constantly being read are empty... but they don't cause this. somehting else must, for the reason mentioned a line above. it happens also in the safe mode, when almost everything is off. but it definitely should not...

also java is reading from time to time, but not constantly, and some other apps too.

a dell technician should contact me (hopefully) tomorrow because of a wifi card swap (they have put a different one that i wanted), so that i'll ask him about this issue too...

 

That might be prefetch and superfetch. Have you disabled them? If not, Google for vista disable superfetch.

 

thanks kegobeer, but it's win xp, not vista...

 

How much free space do you have on the drive? Have you defragged your drive lately? Have you done a complete virus and spyware scan? Have you done a chkdsk recently?

 

it's a brand new laptop (two weeks now), yes i have defragged, simply after installing everything to make sure that nothing's fragmented too much.

71% free space on C:, 20% on D:, both are saying that they don't need defragmenting now.

yes i have done a malware scan - every night actually, now even an anti-rootkit test. no infection there (which is actually the only thing i'm pretty sure about).

but, i have *not* tried chkdsk yet, i guess that it won't reveal anything surprising, but i'll try and will post back right after some result shows up.
edit: done... no errors. - i'm really pretty curious about the cause... i bet that it's something totally simple and obvious, but i only cannot see that...

any more ideas are welcome of course.

 

There's nothing to be concerned about. Both XP/Vista process idle tasks when there's not much CPU activity. Such as defragmenting the boot files(this will happen after installing some programs), or downloading and installing updates, updating the pagefile, etc.

I'd suggest that once it starts, just let it sit for a good hour or two and it will stop eventually.

 

thanks for the comment, but unfortunately, it will *not* stop, i tried to wait. but that ****ed thing blinks whole night and day (i tried), with the fan constantly on. it definitely should *not* be (it was pretty quiet before this started happening and did its job only when needed). or, at least whoever i asked, told that it is not normal that the disk is accessed all the time and the fan is on all the time.

i'm getting a bit desperate...

 

Well, if it's doing it night and day, then something is definately wrong. As a last resort though, I'd perform a clean install.

 

Do you remember exactly when this started?

 

I wish i would... I only know that i noticed this several days ago, but that does not mean much.

What i did, step by step:
- windows & profile setup, some initial settings... i think that at this point, it was all okay
- did a windows update
- installed sw (AV, FW, OO, browsers, some graphic apps) and defragmented
- re-installed ethernet driver because of some issues (caused by my ISP as it turned out in the end, anyway the driver was the same version as before)
- copied data (music, photos) from my old laptop and defragmented again
- created a virtual drive by a startup subst batch (no, removing it unfortunately won't do any difference)
...it started somewhere in the meantime.

What confuses me is that it happens also in the safe mode. None of the Dell funny utilities (which may be handy, sure... but not when it gets to issues like this and you need to trace what the hell is causing it) is running at that point, nor AV or FW or whatever.
I have sent a support request to Dell asking about possible drivers updates, the only thing coming into my mind is drivers... nothing reports a conflict or whatever, though. Or bios..?

 

Lol I performed many clean installs, CCleaned, Windows updated, installed drivers properly, defragmented all files as well as boot files, disabled indexing, and only have 1 program open at the time. I've done so many things to try and fix it, the HD light always lightly blinks when I dont access the HD. I've come to the conclusion it's not damaging, and theres nothing wrong.

 

I♥RAM, just two questions:
- what about your fan, is it always on as well, or not?
- what version of BIOS do you have? mine is A06 (although at dell support site, the most recent one for E5500 says A03, weird), i see that on dell site, it's listed as the most recent for your M4400 too... so i'd guess that it's the same.

if it's the BIOS issue, i hope that the Dell guys will release a fix soon...

um... and about that conclusion: are you sure that it's not damaging? i was said that it is not normal, so, i'm trying to find a solution. if more people will assure me that it won't shorten the laptop's life, i'm okay... but my feeling is that something's really wrong

thanks for the note that clean install did not help, at least i don't have to try too.

 

Download a Linux Live CD and try it out and check the hdd activity there. If it's all normal under Linux I guess something is wrong with you current Windows installation and NOT your BIOS..

 

Have you installed the I8kfan software to control your fan?

 

Both A06 and A03 keep my fans perfect, but I'm on A03 right now since A06 problems have been reported. It's okay for me though if it is truly damaging, I plan to purchase a new laptop in 3 years when my warranty runs out.

I'd ask Dell Pro Support chat why this is happening, they can probably help.

 

good idea, just one thing - i'm really not a linux geek. which one would you recommend? at one site, they recommend Mandriva One Live CD for beginners, i hope that i won't get lost in it... (i've been using SUSE a bit, but it's been a while and it was already installed)

not yet, but i'll look at it thanks for the hint.

i've sent them e-mail last night (no chat here... only phone or e-mails), we'll see. thanks for the additional info.

 

Get Ubuntu. Actually, it doesn't matter what distro you'll use. If it's a BIOS problem you'll get a constant hdd activity as soon as you get to the desktop..
IMO, it's not your BIOS's fault. Maybe Windows is attempting to defrag all the time, or create a restore point or something.

 

hm... the thing is, defragging is not running, nor restore point creating (i have tried that with system restore off among others... still the same, and also in the safe mode, when nearly nothing's running).

my suspect no. 1 is some diver, but i have no idea which one, all pretend to be okay. BIOS came into my mind just because it is the last one without an alibi.

i'm downloading a live cd iso at the moment, the speed is nothing great so i'll have to wait a bit. but i'm curious about the result!

 

Ok I found a free hdd monitoring tool. With this tool you can rule out possible led problem or when you see the activity if the hdd is writing or reading. Unfortunately you cannot see WHAT is writing or reading...
Anyway you can download the program from here. Make sure you check the HELP page here!

 

That's also most likely deferred disk IO - both XP and _Vista (and particularly _Vista) defer a certain amount of disk IO and do it in the background. As to what's being written/read, it could be almost anything, but most likely stuff related to maintaining the system, for example, security auditing on the files.

You might have better luck finding the sources of activity from your event logs, in particular the security logs.

 

what i'm trying to say is... defragmentation may start when there is no activity, on xp it happens. BUT, when it starts, it starts as a process, and you can see it in the task manager...
...nothing like that this time. a DELL technician should be here within ten minutes to swap a wifi card, i'll ask him about this issue as well.
event logs are probably the last place i haven't looked into, i'll try, thanks for the hint.

 

If you want to find out what is writing to the HD, go here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545046.aspx

Diskmon and Filemon are excellent tools for seeing precisely what files are being accessed. FileMon has been replaced by an option within Process Explorer from the same site. Armed with these tools you will be able to pinpoint exactly what is reading or writing to the drive.

Gary

 

I believe that some Seagate drives do this at the hardware level to keep the disk from getting unevenly worn. Worth a look if it is a Seagate drive. i hate them for this and go with WD. I believe that you can turn it off with a Seagate disk utility if that is in fact the issue. Hope this helps. Dave

 

I'm wondering if someone mentioned this in here:
Something similar happened on an old Medion laptop after a messed up defragmentation I belive.
The laptop was accessing the HDD all the time.

Wise Registry Cleaner fixed the problem somehow...
(wouldn't recommend the new one though.. I fear it could delete too much)

Also, which OS are you running? My case was XP SP2...

 

guys, you have more ideas than the dell support. they replied to me like this - try the diagnostic utility (Fn + start computer...), but it seems that you have done everything already, so that we'd recommend that you reinstall the system. nice, now i'll have to get the xp installation cd, as with vista downgrade, i don't have this one (vista cd is delivered with the laptop).

btw the diagnostic utility says that my laptop is absolutely okay, no errors were revealed, in other words, it basically says "stop being paranoid".

the dell technician who was here yesterday to swap the wifi (it wasn't faulty, just the order was a bit confused and they sent the laptop with a different type), and he had no idea what's wrong. but fair enough, he wasn't ready to solve issue like this.

yes i was playing with FileMon and ProcMon, tonight a friend will play with it too as i'm not able to locate what's "normal" and what's suspicious... these are great utilities, well i have to get a bit more familiar with them.

it is a... Seagate. i'll check the utility, thanks for the hint.

xp sp3, as in the signature... the defragmentation pretends to be okay, no signs of being-messed-up, but i'll run it again completely just in case.

i'll definitely try also cleaning the registry with something, ccleaner can not hurt.

oh, and the linux live cd has been downloaded and is being burned at the moment, i found one last empty cd so i hope it will work with the first try and i won't mess it, it's kinda late to run to the store today

 

Before you do a clean instal - as a second to last resort, use WiseRegistry Cleaner.
(However some software seems to be allergic to it...)
As a last resort - if it doesn't change anything, do the clean instal.

 

WiseRegistry Cleaner used, it seems that there is no change regarding the HD thing... at least there is no such mess in the registry now.

but as i'm considering the clean instal since yesterday, it *seems* that the fan got a bit quieter. some kind of voodoo maybe. i'll wait and see.

and, as i wasn't patient enough to wait for the most suitable linux live cd distribution advice, and as the mandriva was being downloaded already... i've ended up with a bug when the system loads and everything, but the KDE won't show up after the splash screen, monitor gets simply blank (without a cursor suggesting that you can type at least). according to google it seems to be a known issue, so... i'll have to buy a bunch of clean CDs in the morning and try again with something else. as i'm really pretty curious about the result.

 

Did ou let Wise Registry Cleaner remove only the "green" ones or the"orange ones" too? - You can remove the orange ones too.

 

Yes, Yes, Yes!!!

i've searched for help on sysinternals forums, and someone had an idea to try and disable the optical drive. and... no more LED blinking!! so, that was it... enabled again, and disabling the cdrom autorun in registry helped, just as described here:

http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=13161&PN=2#61055

No more LED blink per second!!!


I♥RAM, try if it helps to solve the same issue in your case... i hope it will!!!

thanks a lot for help guys!!

 

Good find; so it was the OS polling the CD drive all along, huh? There seem to be more problems caused by dimwitted polling than by almost anything else, at least from what I've seen.

 

yes, exactly... hihi, now i can reply to Dell support with the solution. i know very well how stupid feeling it is for techsupport to receive such e-mail... but well... it may be handy for the next user with the same issue

 

Well, if it was me, I wouldn't just do them the favor of giving them the solution, I'd rub their pointy little noses in the fact that I'd solved something that had outwitted all of them - but then, that's me.

 

Yes, this is truly a solution for my Seagate . Good job.

 

Awright!

@entropy.cz: Now perhaps you should write up an invoice and send it on in to _Dell support billing them for your time, since you've obviously found a solution that will apply to a lot of different people, including a lot of _Dell owners.

 

invoice... well... they accidentaly sent me a second laptop (i paid once only, but one more arrived yesterday, two weeks after the first one), maybe i should keep it now

...but i've already made that stupid mistake and called them to tell them, so the second one it's sitting in the box waiting to be picked up. next time i'm gonna be wiser.

 

I'm having a similar problem with Vista with the disk light blinking every second or two. Unfortunately, I do not have the registry keys that you see in Vista. Any ideas where I should look?

 

So the problem's solved D), but just for the record, XP does have prefetch - just not superfetch.

Interesting - I'll have to consider this if/when I buy a new hard drive.

Neat! I occasionally notice more hard drive activity than I should have, but not nearly that much (I've got a Hitachi hard drive, not Seagate). Trying this tweak - might notice a nice decrease from it. At any rate it'll save a tiny bit of power for something I rarely use.

 

The giveaway to this particular light flashing scenario is the even time between flashes. Actually, not a giveaway, but at least a good clue. ie a "normal" indexing would not be so regular in its timing.

 

Hitachi has a " Feature tool" which let's you change the HD powermanagement and acoustic settings.
It works OS independend, check the information I got from Hitachi technical support here.

 

Just 'cause it's Friday: Does the progression of fetches mean that Win7 will have ultrafetch? And just how fetching is .Windows, anyways?

 

What, haven't you heard? Windows 7 will have "prescient fetch" (tm). It will fetch objects from applications vendor's sites BEFORE you even install them on your machine, because it just knows you will want them.

Gary

 

Ahh, sort of like when Microsoft "presciently" determined that the most RAM we'd ever need was 640K, back in the day?

 

They should call it OmniFetch, a version of Superfetch that is God-like in its omniscience and omnipotence. It knows what you're going to want before you do.

 

Actually neither Microsoft or Bill Gates ever said that. It is an old urban myth:

http://74.125.95.104/search?q=cache...Origin+of+640k+limit&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Here is a quote from that:

A bit more about this can be found here: http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm

Again a quote:

The problem was a hardware issue, often incorrectly attributed to Gates. Having been around for the original IBM PC (and its predecessors as well MITS Altair, IMSAI, Digital Group etc.) I knew it twas not Bill's decision that we would only ever need 640k. I do seem to remember an IBM exec being challenged on this and saying no one would ever use more than 640k, but darned if I can find a quote. I just know it wasn't Uncle Bill.

Gary