Thankyou for your response and great advice.
I had a suspicion I had little to worry about but just wanted to be sure...
:-)


"Andrew McLaren" <andrew@fakeaddress.com> wrote in message
news:8815CAF3-791D-47B7-8B3A-270E98782B14@microsoft.com...
> Hey Ryan,
>
> Vista is designed to perform a lot of processing and self-maintence in the
> background. For example, defrag automatically kicks in when the system is
> idle; Windows Update downloads and installs updates automatically; and the
> Search Indexer will index new data and optimise indexes, also when CPU is
> available (ie, system is idle).
>
> So yes: a lot of disk activity even when the machine is unattended, is
> normal with Vista.
>
> This is actually a Good Thing - it means that your PC is actually doing
> some useful work even while it is standing idle; instead of sitting there
> doing nothing, until you press some button. It's better use of available
> resources.
>
> The only time you should worry is if disk I/O is associated with an
> application you don't recognise. In Task Manager, under the Proceses tab,
> you can add columns for I/O Read, I/O Write, and I/O Other. By sorting on
> the I/O colums you can check which app is doing all the disk I/O. If it is
> a process like System, CSRSS, or SvcHost.exe, there's no problem, this is
> normal. If it is some process you don't recognise, it may be a virus. In
> that case, update your signature files and run a full virus scan
> immediately.
>
> Hope it helps,
> Andrew