What the hell is my computer doing!


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I have this problem that whilst typing on the computer, the hard drive starts grinding away and the hard drive light comes on permanently.

I continue typing but the text stops appearing, after a minute or two the hard drives light becomes normal and the line of text appears where I have been typing?

Whilst this is happening I can do nothing with the mouse, the mouse pointer changes to the text sampling bar but left clicking does not work on anything, until the hard drives stops.

Its quite an old laptop, but what is the hard drive actually doing?

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I have this problem that whilst typing on the computer, the hard drive starts grinding away and the hard drive light comes on permanently.

I continue typing but the text stops appearing, after a minute or two the hard drives light becomes normal and the line of text appears where I have been typing?

Whilst this is happening I can do nothing with the mouse, the mouse pointer changes to the text sampling bar but left clicking does not work on anything, until the hard drives stops.

Its quite an old laptop, but what is the hard drive actually doing?

Mick, I would say you have the beginnings of a hard-drive bearing failure. And once that happens there is Nowt yer can do abaht it. I suggest you move quickly to back it up.

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A similar thing happens to my laptop but only when the scheduled anti-virus software is going through its daily scan .

As you say the hard drive light is permanently on, without flashing . If you go into the system tools it tells you what is using all the computers resources .

On mine , as soon as the scan finishes everything returns to normal .

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Easiest is to hold down Ctl, Alt and press Del, all at the same time. Then select Task Manager. Irrespective of the Op Sys you are running you will be able to see what is happening on your machine at that moment.

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If you select the "Processes" tab in Task Manager, and then click on the CPU heading twice. It will list the processes in order of CPU resource being used. The top process should be using 99% of the resource.

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Hi Mick,

don't know what version of Windows you are running. But if you have a "Run" command in the "Start" tab, then select it and enter "msconfig" and click Okay. If running Win 7 then select the "Tools" tab and then Select "Resource Monitor" and "Launch" it. I would use this to find out what is happening. If not Win 7 get back to me.

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Sometimes, hard drives keep looking for files that are still shown in the registry, but may have been deleted. That leads to the HD 'thrashing'.

I have a regular routine for clearing up redundant files and cleaning the registry. All the programmes I use are free and I can vouch for how well they work.

To clear out the cr@p, I use CCleaner (http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner), which empties internet caches, etc. It can also clear out some registry errors and, if you know what you're doing, you can prune the files your computer loads on start-up - which makes it boot a lot quicker.

For a more in-depth clean of the registry, I then use Eusing Registry Cleaner (http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm)

It's amazing how much better, and quieter, my XP computer performs after running these.

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Just run your alternate to piriform (That found 1200 bits of crap on my PC too, even though I use CClean at least once a fortnight.!)

I'm running your defrag now too

Thanks for the tips

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Vista

Yes I know MSCONFIG, but what in that?

I haven't run Vista for yonks. so can't second guess what is there. There should be a "Tools" tab in msconfig. Select the "Resource Monitor" "Tool" and launch it. If available it will show you all activity. If there is lots of disk and little CPU it might suggest disk re-reads due to problems there.

The previous process list under Task Manager should show the "System Idle Process" at 99% at the top.

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