Harddisk Continous usage?

[atifsh]

for some unknown reasons my harddisk seems tobe in use all the time, wasnt the case few days back but couple of days back i found my pc's slugishness and found this.... any way to find what software or somthing doing this before i start uninstalling everything one by one

[jm1647]

You could do a search for spyware and viruses

Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy are two popular ones for spyware/malware. Spybot is free and Adaware has a free version also.

Symantec and other sites will do a virus scan while your on their site.

[jmet]

If you OS is XP, simply do a "System Restore" back to a time when you know things were working properly.

[admin]

Your symptoms really do sound like spyware, or possibly a trojan.

If in Windows XP, access the Task Manager (right click on bottom task bar and select Task Manager, or press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select the task manager. Go to the "Processes" tab and order the displayed running processes based on CPU or memory usage. If you find some processes that you don't know about, do a search on Google, and it should usually tell you what they are for (and whether it is spyware).

You can also click on the Start button, select "Run" and type in "msconfig". Go to the "Startup" section, and it will show you a list of programs that are loaded on start up - you should be able to tell most of the programs to see if they are what you intended to have running (like NVmixer if you have an NVIDIA sound card), and Windows needs rundll32, msnmsgr if you have MSN Messenger installed, and possibly ctfmon, but everything else should be optional (I have about 10 selected, mainly for the anti-virus program).

The best bet is to use an anti-spyware and then an anti-virus scanner to scan your system, as these tools will look at both of the above for you automatically, and spot the spyware/trojan for you.

[jm1647]

An antispyware program I have been using for a long time is SpywareBlaster available free here It does not stay active/use up resources, it justs protects after installing and is updated regularly. It also has a restricted site feature to keep you away from the known evil sites. Works pretty good, it prevents the spyware from getting active in the first place.

[fanboy19]

Another good free program is Titanium 2005 by Panda Software...well, its free for thirty days at least. It will detect and clean viruses and spyware. I personally use this along with Spybot - Search and Destroy and Spywareblaster and the three combined seem to catch just about everything. The download site for Titanium 2005 is here: http://www.pandasoftware.com/downloa...sp?track=18952

[Experi-Mentor]

for what it's worth - after you've removed the spyware/virus/offending prog, also consider using a good firewall prog. "zone alarm" makes a good/free version

[tigerman8u]

here's a good free site to see how well your pc is protected/firewalled
http://www.grc.com/default.htm it will test your ports etc to see how vulnerable they are

[atifsh]

thnks guys but precautions i take and updats i do, its not possible a spyware or some could do it, has tobe a power failure i had round same time. i dont have anything suspsious in my task manager. have systemworks 2005 pro running that does well. but i will anyhow check for the spywares using the tools someof u listed Thnk U.

[atifsh]

well problem solved, it was a hardware/bios malfunction i assume due to power loss i had.
i cleared my bios and its all working fine....
only regret now have to reinstall all my Ulead stuff back, that iv uninstalled during testing.

[jm1647]

Glad to hear you got it straightened out and thanks for the update. Strange the MB battery did not retain the bios info, musta been a big hiccup your system did