So something in Win7 is making my hard drive pulse as if someone's trying to read from it

[Occulus]

I'm in linux in the meantime.

Here's what's up: the hard drive light is pulsing, like it's reading or writing something over and over. It's a "flickerish" pulsing, meaning the light isn't steady during activity, but flickers on and off rapidly for about a second, then is totally off for about a second. At the same time, my network meter is reporting small amounts of data being both sent and received. Also, one of my four cores goes from 3-5% (idle) to 11-15% at the same time, sometimes it (any given CPU core) spikes to 30%. This alternates between cores.

I ran Spybot and it found one browser entry that was unrelated. I have previously been running TeaTimer, had AVG running in the background, and just today installed AdAware. Running a system scan in each of these programs has found nothing. I allowed the PC to "do its thing" and the hard drive, CPU, and network activity continued for half an hour straight.

This is not occurring in linux.

It's hard for me to tell if its affects Windows performance from my end because my PC is fast enough that the activity is negligible, and doesn't really affect anything; for example, Oblivion ran at 35fps with everything turned up. I just can't tell if harm is being done from a performance perspective, but I've never seen this behavior before, and it's clearly related to Win7 and not a network attack of some sort (I even updated my router's firmware, temporarily axing my whole internet access in the process, but that's obviously fixed now).

Obviously, I'll run AVG and AdAware tonight, but is there anything else I should look for? I have Windows Automatic Updates turned off, but I looked at it anyway, and there aren't any available, so I know it's not that. Windows firewall is turned on, too.

I looked at my running processes and services and couldn't find anything totally unknown or anything I couldn't account for. Could it be an autodefrag of some sort that Win7 decided to run? I'm kind of stumped here.

I'm glad I have linux while I wait, though. All of a sudden, I feel 'safer' than I did in Windows.....

[MyNameGoesHere]

1. So really how do you know it is

Win 7 causing this? I take it you have nothing else whatsoever installed? And why do you feel unsafe? Is your linux box disconnected from networks and sealed in a safe room with biometric and 2 part access? A concerned person can nail down what is causing disk writes in linux and windows rather quickly. Someone that wants to spread the fear about operating systems doesn't really care.

[madokie]

2. Little rough there aren't you

For the most part we try to be cordial to one another around here. I'm a recently converted to linux man myself and loving the fact i don't even have to worry with virus's, ad ware. spyware, the registry or defraging. WOW and all for free. I even run AutoCad in linux ;-)

[Occulus]

8. The problem has resolved itself somehow

(I'll pin this to your post so it's up near the top)

Mods may close this thread if they wish. The problem is spontaneously no longer a problem.

[Occulus]

4. Wow, talk about taking it wrong- I booted into linux to see if the network was still showing

activity, as well as to see if the hard drive was still being repeatedly accessed. It's a dual-boot configuration; I primarily use Win7 because I'm a gamer (I *like* 7, a lot, actually). The abnormal network, CPU, and hard drive activity aren't occurring in linux (I think I said that in my OP), so obviously, something either installed in Win7 or part of Win7 is repeatedly accessing my hard drive and transferring (very small) amounts of data, more often than once per second.

This is more activity than routine network pings. I know what that looks like. This is something new.

You mention being completely disconnected from any network (in a very snarky manner, but you did). Earlier, I completely disconnected my computer from the network while in Windows (I physically unplugged the network cord) and my hard drive began to run constantly after I rebooted without it being physically connected. Solid red light, even after a reboot. I should mention that I have a wireless network card, but not a wireless network router. I was using the wireless card in Windows to bridge to the wired ethernet card for my ipod touch, but I had previously disabled that wireless card while trying to diagnose this problem. Disabling the wireless card had no effect .

Something is very very obviously wrong here. Disk writes and unnecessary network activity aren't happening in my Ubuntu install; they're only happening in Win7 and I must stress again that this is a brand new issue. I was using Win7 as my primary OS long before the general public was, as I downloaded (and currently run) the Windows 7 64-bit Release Candidate, and up until now I've loved it. This isn't about spreading fear and loathing, this is about a legit issue that makes me wonder WTF is going on.

The fact that these issues don't occur in Ubuntu is proof that it's a Windows-only issue, be it something installed in Win7 by accident or an attack against Vista of some sort (Win7 uses the Vista kernel). I even updated the firmware of the router everything else sits behind, and that didn't have any effect. Again, my virus and adbot scanners don't detect anything in Win7.

If this continues, I'll have to reinstall 7, which isn't really a big deal for me, but it's a hassle I'd like to avoid if I can. I'm wondering if anyone knows of any illicit/adbot/trojan services cause that sort of behavior, and what sort of technical parts of Win7 I should look at to try to further diagnose the problem.

I've been building my own PCs since about 1994 or so. I generally know what I'm doing, but this one's got me stumped.

[canetoad]

6. So many questions

and so few helpful answers.

[MyNameGoesHere]

7. much like this reply? n/t

[Duer 157099]

3. I had this several weeks ago

It was driving me crazy. I pared everything down to the minimum, nothing auto was running; used the File Monitor (or Disk Monitor) program(s) from System Internals to see if I could see what was happening during those disk-seek moments. I never did figure out exactly what it was, but I notice that it's no longer doing it.

I mostly was able to rule out anything nefarious, and I think I concluded that it had something to do with fragmentation or the page file so that my disk had to constantly seek far-and-wide for a part of a file that it used very regularly. I think I may have defragged agressively (including the registry and page files) and that's eventually what cured it, but I'm not certain.

It was a major PITA though.

[Occulus]

5. It just stopped for me as well

Defrag? Is it really defrag?

Huh.