Reading Off My Hard DRive...

[NeverNeverland]

So suddenly a strange thing has been happening - when i'm on the Internet (Firefox) typing or pages are loading (and possibly when everythin'gs quiet) Something is readng off my hard divre and my computer freezes up for a few seconds. This happens once every two minutes or so... it's annoying. It doesn't happen when i'm doing non-Internet related activities.

Any idea how I can figure out what this is? I tried Ad aware, Spybot SD and a virus scan, ad they didn't find nothing

[DoJo]

Re: Reading Off My Hard DRive...

This could be a number of things: an application running in the background (malware or not), a failing hard drive, a fragmented hard drive, running low on disk space, etc.

Since you have checked spyware and viruses, I would start with checking the processes running in Task Manager (assuming you are running Windows) and see if any applications are using up a lot of CPU.

Ctrl-Alt-Dlt, choose Task Manager, click on the Processes tab and sort on the CPU column. Normally your System Idle Process runs the highest percentage but if you see something unusual in here, google the name of the process to get more info and if you determine it isn't necessary, try ending the process and see if that helps.

Next I would run scandisk to check for hard drive errors. On the hard drive icon, right-click/properties, select Tools tab, and click on Error checking. Select the check boxes and Start.

For more ideas on possible causes, this is a good thread to read: http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-10149-0...sageID=1156262

[NeverNeverland]

Re: Reading Off My Hard DRive...

Thanks for the help... it's not low memory. I have Win ME so so I don't have the processes tab or CPU And my computer's OLD so the Scandisk doesn't work - it just keeps restarting and eventually stops w/an error mesage. If my computer crashes, sometimes when it comes up on restart it'll run all the way through.

I suspect it's some kind of "bad thing" since this i recent. Something like this happened before, I think, but I don't remember how it was corrected. It only happens when I have a Web browser as the active window. if I'm just doing other stuff, even if the browser's open but not active, everything's fine.

Yeah, it's always complicated with me :lol:

[DoJo]

Re: Reading Off My Hard DRive...

If you are having trouble with Scan Disk quitting during a scan, you can try booting into Safe Mode first (tap F8 as your PC boots up) and choose Safe Mode from the menu) and then running Scan Disk. This probably won't fix your problem but good to know for future use.

Have you noticed the problem with Internet Explorer also? If not, perhaps you could try reinstalling Firefox. Before that, I would try clearing the browser cache in Firefox. Sometimes when your cache gets full it slows everything down.

If you still feel it may be malware running in the background, maybe you could try system restore and choose a restore point that exists before this started happening. If none of this helps you can always choose the nuke option and just wipe the disk clean and reload Windows (after backing up your files of course)

Good luck.

P.S.: Just to be clear, low memory(RAM) and low hard disk space are two seperate issues. Let me know if you need help checking these.

[figment1986]

Re: Reading Off My Hard DRive...

the famous saying: "Need more memory" lol

or save a thousand for a mini mac with dual core... then boot camp windows xp on it if your afraid... mac is your friend...

Dell is my enemy.

[NeverNeverland]

Re: Reading Off My Hard DRive...

I have enough RAM and it happens even when I have a gig free, so I doubt it's either of those (and it's a recent problem). I reinstalled FF but it did'nt go away.

Mac is NOT my friend, Figment

I'll try the safe mode thing but i'll probably just tough it out 'til I *fingers crossed* get a new one for Christmas. This computer IS 5 years old... it might just be old age :lol: