While it is true that the installed and running Operating System [OS] can
make your machine give "false" readings for the hard-drive lamp, you should
at least be able to tell whether or not the circuitry for the indicator is
intact by observing disk activity shown by it as the system boots-up from a
"cold-start".
A "cold-start" being one where the OS has been shut down entirely and not
put into one of the available "sleep-states" or "suspend-mode".
As the OS has not started yet, the HD indicator lamp should give true
readings, initially, as the system boots. Only when the system starts
regularly accessing the page-file, should you expect to see any bogus
readings due to your OS.
Making such observations should at least tell you if there's a greater
problem with your machine.
Also, making comparisons with the output of the "Disk Monitor" utility and
your HD activity lamp should give you further clues as to what is
happening.
(The URL for Disk Monitor utility is again; )
http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/DiskMon.zip
==
Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
"Jim" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:31:42 -0000, "Tim Meddick"
wrote:
I don't think the button you mentioned exists in the XP Task Manager -
you
may have been using Win7 to long now to remember.
Under the Performance tab are a Resource Monitor - style "graphical"
bar-meter to show real-time usage for both CPU strain (& running history)
and Page File usage (& running history).
Also, there are four boxes beneath the two "graphical" meters, displaying
constantly updating numerical values for :
Totals
Physical Memory (K)
Commit Charge (K)
Kernel Memory (K)
...but again, no "buttons".....
There are no "buttons" under the Resource tab, whatsoever!
On another related matter, perhaps the [free] utility from sysinternals
may
be of some [diagnostic] help here...
It's the "Disk Monitor" utility, and once run, can be minimized to the
system tray and acts just like any "Hard-drive lamp" on any PC.
Appearing
red for current disk i/o "writes", green for current "reads" and yellow
for
"no disk i/o".
Once copied from it's ZP-file to any place included in your %path%
variable, you can start it already minimised to the system tray from a
registry "Run-Key" command :
diskmon.exe /l
Download the Disk Monitor utility from the sysinternals website at :
http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/DiskMon.zip
==
Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
"Stan Brown" wrote in message
et...
On Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:26:00 -0600, Jim wrote:
I noticed my hard drive light is now almost constantly on, no matter
if nothing is running, with just the desktop showing.
Doing CTL ALT DELETE I see all kinds of processes running, and tried
to look them up doing google search, but can't find anything that
I can recognize that might cause this. My laptop running the same
XP Professional doesn't do that, when you stop running programs the
hard drive activity light stops.
How can I find out what is causing this and remove it from my
system? I tried stopping various processes but am afraid to
terminate too many for fear of what might happen.
Would a list of the processes running in the Task Manager help
in diagnosing this problem? I'd hate to have to do a complete
re-install again, it takes days.
Hi. I used to have XP, but now I have Windows 7, so I'm not sure this
will be helpful. But since no one else has replied ...
On the Performance tab of Task Manager, look near the bottom for a
button labeled Resource Monitor. If you have it, click it for a
utility that shows disk usage by process on one of its tabs. That is
a bit more focused that simply looking up every process on the
Processes tab of Task Manager, though the latter is possible too.
I had a similar issue in Windows 7, which turned out to be
TrustedInstaller. But I believe that was introduced in Vista, so it
would not be applicable to you.
However, you still might be experiencing Windows searching for
updates. You could try changing that to non-automatic. IIRC, you
open the Security Center and click "change how Windows search for
updates" -- I'm sorry I can't be more precise.
It should go without saying, but I'll say it -- have you done a
thorough malware scan recently, with definitions up to date?
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...
Tim;
Merry Christmas. That sounds like a great little utility, it
would at least tell me if the CPU is trying to READ or to WRITE
the drive. When the drive light is on, there is no change in PAGE
FILE
or CPU USAGE usually doesn't change much, nor is there any NETWORK
activity either, strange. I disabled the Anti Virus and the Spyware
programs, no luck. Strange part I have the exact same stuff running
on my Thinkpad, and the drive light rarely comes on unless doing some
other operation.
Jim