Tom - XP and your grinding HDD ...

[Walt]

It occurred to me that most likely it is your swap file being swapped back and forth from RAM to HDD ... if the page file was set inappropriately for the RAM size you have (sometimes even Windows doesn't manage it very well either), then this could cause the apparent thrashing back and forth.

Try this (to manually set your page file sizes) ...

1. Right-click "My Computer" on the desktop and select "Properties"

2. Click the tab "Advanced" and then in the Performance section click "Settings"

3. Click the "Advanced" tab and then in the Virtual memory section click "Change"

4. Click the "Custom size" button and in the two text boxes, enter a number that is 1.5 times the amount of RAM in your system (ie: if you had 128MB of RAM you'd type 192 in both boxes)

5. Click OK and restart your system when prompted.

See if that helps ...

If not we'll try something else.

Also let me know what Task Manager reports is happening to CPU usage and the Page File size when you hear the grinding begin.

 

[Walt]

Another thing to try ... this will turn off the NTFS indexing, BUT try the first suggestion above first to see if that remedies it ...

Open My Computer, right-click the hard disk and select Properties. Now uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast searching".

If this option is NOT available you probably just need to log back on as the system adminstrator with admin rights (or allocate admin rights to the logon you normally use).

See how you go and report back ...

 

[Walt]

Yes it does sound like the indexing service ...

Did the "disable" option in Computer Management /Services/ Indexing specify what drive it referred to? Or was it just a general option (sorry I'm actually at work right now and we use NT4 here) ... I will look at my Win XP when I get home (although I use multiple FAT32 partitions).

Good luck, see if it improves, if not we'll try to nail it down to something else (at this point I could always recommend the age-old techo solution ... reformat/reinstall, but I won't cos I hate that myself!)

 

[THOR]

Thoots you don't have one of those infamous IBM HD's that are dying everywhere do you??