Hi there - I've just recently had an odd problem surface on my machine. This is my first time requesting help here, so please bare with me. I'll try to be explicit.

I just recently discovered that my computer is constantly accessing the harddrive no matter what. Every second or so, there's a pulse on the HD light and a noticable sound from the HD itself. This is odd to me, because this usually doesn't happen when my computer's idling. When checking the task manager, I noticed that explorer.exe and winlogon.exe are both generating HUGE numbers of page faults - And winlogon.exe in particular is creating quite a few for no reason (I can't even imagine what winlogon.exe is doing). I thought it might be a virus or malware. Norton came up with nothing, and I double-checked against Panda ActivePro as well. Both showed I was clean. Similarly, Spybot S&D and AdAware came up with no problems either. Running a netstat showed no open connections when my computer was idle, too.

Does anyone know what might be causing this? I'm a little uneasy knowing my computer is chugging away even when I'm not asking it to do anything. It makes me feel like something's very wrong, and sometimes it prevents my computer from turning off the monitor for powersaving.

Here are my specs:

Pentium 4 3.2 GHz
1 GB RAM - Corsair (I'm forgetting what speed it is, I think PC300?)
ABIT AI7 motherboard
Windows XP SP2 - up to date according to Windows Update
Western Digital Raptor 74 Gig HD
Sapphire Radeon x800 pro
Soundblaster Audigy 2



Any help that anyone could provide would be most appreciated. Thanks!

Hi

right click on the taskbar and select Task Manager - go to the processes tab and sort it in CPU useage (highest number at the top) - each time the hard drive light goes, check to see whet process is moved to the top of that list. If you need help identifying the process, post its name here.

Thanks for the reply!

It seems that when sorting by CPU usage while idling, the following programs fight for the top of the list. They bounce back and forth quite rapidly (at about the refresh rate of the task manager), with one of the following three on top each time: taskmgr.exe, msmsgs.exe and explorer.exe

I'm pretty sure they're all system processes, but I can't imagine why they'd be constantly doing something now whereas this wasn't happening before. I'm not sure - Maybe I'm just being paranoid! Could one of these processes have been infected?

Incidently, I found a way to prevent msmsgs.exe from running, so that one's no longer on the list. Even so, it seems as if the problem isn't going away. Taskmgr.exe and Explorer.exe seem to be the only processes using CPU power while idling - And Explorer.exe is still generating a new page fault every second or so.

What sort of CPU useage are you seeing from those services?

Usually each of the processes that jumps to the top is using anywhere between 1-2 % of the CPU. Sometimes it can jump as high as 4%, but I've never observed it going over that... I think something's certainly accessing the hard drive, though, since the page faults increase for no reason.

I'm not entirely sure how to do that, unforutnately. All I know is that when I look at the task manager, and I have the "Page Faults" display enabled, that the number of page faults for explorer.exe and winlogon.exe steadily increase over time. PF Delta for these processes stays at about 1 the whole time.

Thanks a whole lot for helping with this. I've attached the application log here - It was enormous, and too big to be attached in it's entirety. So I just included the last seven days.

And here's the system log. I had to truncate it, too.

Thanks. I'll give that a shot after I get home from work, then report back. I know for a fact that all critical updates have been downloaded and installed - I keep an eye out for those.

However, would you really suggest updating ALL of the drivers avalible? I know that one of the drivers is a Windows-provided ATi driver, and I'd much rather use the ATi provided drivers instead if that's at all possible. I'm not sure what the best course of action would be, though.

Okay then, thanks. According to Windows Update, I've got all the security fixes and patches. The only updates avalible other than these are an outlook patch, a windows media connect patch (I never use either), and the ATi drivers.