Vista Excessive Disk Activity

For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers and
many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
solid - and I couldn't figure out why.

I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
disk activity.


The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and was
caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain VISTA
features - so what?.


Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a few
each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
Applications with that PID - with no success.

In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers, apps
installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:

files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.

c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
from System

This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.

I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
activity goes on.

I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.

I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
buy a Mac).

Have you tried right-clicking on the Task Bar, and bringing up Task Manager
to see what is going on?
--
Mick Murphy - Qld - Australia


"rbd" wrote:

> For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
> Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
> finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers and
> many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
> solid - and I couldn't figure out why.
>
> I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
> useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
> disk activity.
>
>
> The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and was
> caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
> stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
> this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
> through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
> once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
> It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
> would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
> I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
> routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
> drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
> files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
> description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain VISTA
> features - so what?.
>
>
> Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
> continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a few
> each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
> Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
> Applications with that PID - with no success.
>
> In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
> backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers, apps
> installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
> in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:
>
> files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
> from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.
>
> c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
> c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
> c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
> from System
>
> This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.
>
> I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
> off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
> activity goes on.
>
> I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
> damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
> this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
> and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.
>
> I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
> write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
> isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
> buy a Mac).
>
>

I am having this exact same issue. I went thru and stopped a bunch of
services that were running and the disk activity stopped, however, it caused
my media center to start acting up and doing funny things. (i use the My
Movies add-in w/it).

anyway else figure this out ?

"rbd" wrote:

> For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
> Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
> finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers and
> many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
> solid - and I couldn't figure out why.
>
> I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
> useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
> disk activity.
>
>
> The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and was
> caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
> stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
> this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
> through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
> once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
> It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
> would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
> I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
> routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
> drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
> files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
> description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain VISTA
> features - so what?.
>
>
> Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
> continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a few
> each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
> Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
> Applications with that PID - with no success.
>
> In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
> backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers, apps
> installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
> in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:
>
> files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
> from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.
>
> c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
> c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
> c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
> from System
>
> This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.
>
> I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
> off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
> activity goes on.
>
> I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
> damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
> this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
> and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.
>
> I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
> write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
> isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
> buy a Mac).
>
>

I have been having exactly the same problem, shutting off internet access
does not affect it at all. I cannot get enough info out of task manager to
determine what is causing the hard drive to run continuously. I have enough
security items running that I am sure there's no bot or virus running on my
computer. One thing I have noticed is that when I allow Windows to update
itself this problem magnifies at least tenfold slowing my system down
immensely. With the issues I've had with this computer and software
manufacturers passing the buck my next system will be a Mac.






"Frank G" wrote:

> I am having this exact same issue. I went thru and stopped a bunch of
> services that were running and the disk activity stopped, however, it caused
> my media center to start acting up and doing funny things. (i use the My
> Movies add-in w/it).
>
> anyway else figure this out ?
>
> "rbd" wrote:
>
> > For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
> > Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
> > finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers and
> > many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
> > solid - and I couldn't figure out why.
> >
> > I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
> > useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
> > disk activity.
> >
> >
> > The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and was
> > caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
> > stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
> > this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
> > through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
> > once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
> > It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
> > would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
> > I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
> > routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
> > drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
> > files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
> > description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain VISTA
> > features - so what?.
> >
> >
> > Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
> > continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a few
> > each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
> > Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
> > Applications with that PID - with no success.
> >
> > In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
> > backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers, apps
> > installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
> > in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:
> >
> > files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
> > from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.
> >
> > c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
> > c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
> > c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
> > from System
> >
> > This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.
> >
> > I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
> > off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
> > activity goes on.
> >
> > I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
> > damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
> > this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
> > and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.
> >
> > I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
> > write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
> > isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
> > buy a Mac).
> >
> >

rbd wrote:
> For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
> Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
> finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers and
> many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
> solid - and I couldn't figure out why.
>
> I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
> useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
> disk activity.
>
>
> The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and was
> caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
> stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
> this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
> through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
> once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
> It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
> would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
> I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
> routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
> drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
> files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
> description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain VISTA
> features - so what?.
>
>
> Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
> continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a few
> each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
> Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
> Applications with that PID - with no success.
>
> In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
> backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers, apps
> installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
> in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:
>
> files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
> from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.
>
> c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
> c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
> c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
> from System
>
> This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.
>
> I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
> off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
> activity goes on.
>
> I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
> damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
> this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
> and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.
>
> I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
> write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
> isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
> buy a Mac).
>


You could try right clicking on the dis drive icon and in properties
turn off "Index this drive..." whatever. Seems like that made a
difference fo me, and since I rarely use "Search" functions the indexing
time is just wasted.

>>>I have enough security items running<<<

And what may all these be including your Antivirus?

--
All the best,
SG

Is your computer system ready for Vista?
https://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/
Want to keep up with the latest news from MS?
http://news.google.com/nwshp?tab=wn&ned=us&topic=t
Just type in Microsoft

"Pat M" <Pat M@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3DE89681-3047-47B2-A96C-72F7447AAA5B@microsoft.com...
>I have been having exactly the same problem, shutting off internet access
> does not affect it at all. I cannot get enough info out of task manager to
> determine what is causing the hard drive to run continuously. I have
> enough
> security items running that I am sure there's no bot or virus running on
> my
> computer. One thing I have noticed is that when I allow Windows to update
> itself this problem magnifies at least tenfold slowing my system down
> immensely. With the issues I've had with this computer and software
> manufacturers passing the buck my next system will be a Mac.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Frank G" wrote:
>
>> I am having this exact same issue. I went thru and stopped a bunch of
>> services that were running and the disk activity stopped, however, it
>> caused
>> my media center to start acting up and doing funny things. (i use the My
>> Movies add-in w/it).
>>
>> anyway else figure this out ?
>>
>> "rbd" wrote:
>>
>> > For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
>> > Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
>> > finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers
>> > and
>> > many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
>> > solid - and I couldn't figure out why.
>> >
>> > I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
>> > useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
>> > disk activity.
>> >
>> >
>> > The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and
>> > was
>> > caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
>> > stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
>> > this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
>> > through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
>> > once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
>> > It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
>> > would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
>> > I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
>> > routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
>> > drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
>> > files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
>> > description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain
>> > VISTA
>> > features - so what?.
>> >
>> >
>> > Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
>> > continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a
>> > few
>> > each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
>> > Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
>> > Applications with that PID - with no success.
>> >
>> > In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
>> > backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers,
>> > apps
>> > installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
>> > in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:
>> >
>> > files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
>> > from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.
>> >
>> > c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
>> > c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
>> > c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
>> > from System
>> >
>> > This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.
>> >
>> > I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
>> > off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
>> > activity goes on.
>> >
>> > I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
>> > damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
>> > this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
>> > and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.
>> >
>> > I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
>> > write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
>> > isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
>> > buy a Mac).
>> >
>> >

Atleast I am not alone, on this. I also found the virus program, spy
program, etc doesn't matter if they are off. The problem still happens.
Although common sense says this, it can't be left out. The drive can't be
scanned for errors. You get a "drive can't be scanned when in use." Right now
the accessing has been giong on for almost a week. The version used is vista
basic. With posting what they are microsoft may need to look into this. Even
indexing is off.
"Charlie Tame" wrote:

> rbd wrote:
> > For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
> > Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
> > finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers and
> > many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
> > solid - and I couldn't figure out why.
> >
> > I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
> > useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
> > disk activity.
> >
> >
> > The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and was
> > caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
> > stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
> > this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
> > through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
> > once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
> > It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
> > would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
> > I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
> > routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
> > drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
> > files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
> > description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain VISTA
> > features - so what?.
> >
> >
> > Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
> > continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a few
> > each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
> > Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
> > Applications with that PID - with no success.
> >
> > In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
> > backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers, apps
> > installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
> > in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:
> >
> > files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
> > from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.
> >
> > c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
> > c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
> > c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
> > from System
> >
> > This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.
> >
> > I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
> > off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
> > activity goes on.
> >
> > I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
> > damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
> > this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
> > and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.
> >
> > I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
> > write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
> > isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
> > buy a Mac).
> >
>
>
> You could try right clicking on the dis drive icon and in properties
> turn off "Index this drive..." whatever. Seems like that made a
> difference fo me, and since I rarely use "Search" functions the indexing
> time is just wasted.
>

Just wanted to let you know I'm having the same problems. Nothing gets
me so totally mad as when the hard drive is going crazy. I intensely
hope that it is not a virus spreading around the drive

For the record, I've turned off:
*indexing
*defragmenting
*superfetch (from services.msc)


--
Ursa

Hi,

More likely excessive paging, and disabling superfetch only makes it worse.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"Ursa" <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote in message
news:2c1c051b3c2dc0576bc1d3de45af4ccd@nntp-gateway.com...
>
> Just wanted to let you know I'm having the same problems. Nothing gets
> me so totally mad as when the hard drive is going crazy. I intensely
> hope that it is not a virus spreading around the drive
>
> For the record, I've turned off:
> *indexing
> *defragmenting
> *superfetch (from services.msc)
>
>
> --
> Ursa

Forgot to mention that I've turned off my paging file too found the
superfetch tip in another forum. But I'll turn that one back on.


--
Ursa