For the love of god.. can I use MY hard drive PLEASE????

[#1]

I have a rather large and old workstation sat under the desk. Since developing some mild tinnitus that comes and goes i don't use it much. It has two quad core processors giving me 8 cores of wonderful processing power and 16GB ram although its only DDR2.. but still solid for my needs.

Now this machine is kept off most of the time unless i really need it - simply because of the noise it emits. When I do turn it on I'm now finding that for around 15-20 minutes the HDD led glows a constant green and when i log into it via remote desktop, i find it hard to do almost anything for ages because the HDD is in constant use - mostly by "System" according to the resource monitor.

It's doing my flaming head in and really winding me up because its my machine and I WANT TO USE IT. It never used to do this when it was in daily use, why is the "system" now deciding it needs to rumble around for a solid quarter of an hour? By the time its decided to allow me the use of my own machine i've forgotten why i wanted to use it or just given up.

The processor cores show very little cpu usage.. so i'm baffled. Ideas?

Once the system has given up holding my time to ransom then avast decides to kick in.. along with many other updaters 

[#2]

Not an expert.... but... from what you have said... two things come to mind.....

1. you said it never did this when I was using it all the time...   . It never used to do this when it was in daily use,

2. the last line gives some clue as to what may well be going on...    avast decides to kick in.. along with many other updaters

Perhaps, because it has not been used for long periods of time... many updates of various shapes and sizes are trying to catch up with themselves...  ( don`t forget, that some of the Windows updates run silently in the background checking for other (earlier) updates, before the original (silent) update can be installed, thus blocking further updates. )

Maybe you could "suffer" it being on for 24 hours  ( if you consider it safe to leave it unattended over night).. and see if the problem of the overworking hdd is still present after switching off for 24 hours..

[#3]

I would first try powering up without an active internet connection to see if it is an internal process that is running and accessing the hard drive. If so, let it run to completion. If not, what @shutter says.

[#4]

What I used to do with an old server I had (Compaq ML370 beast of a pc) was put it in the attic, on 24/7 running my mail server. Then if I needed access vnc into it.
But as has been said, probably hdd scans being done, or win finishing downloading win10 😉

[#5]

I had an old drive that used to do that.

It turned out in the end it was struggling with some bad sectors.

Probably just about readable but took a long time to get past them.

[#6]

I have automatic updates turned off so it shouldn't really be that. I did several months ago however find it had automatically downloaded the first wave of win10 auto updates... the shields up site helped to deal with that. M$ are rotten to the core..

[#7]

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@7up wrote:

M$ are rotten to the core..

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don't use their products then.

[#8]

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@chenks76 wrote:

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@7up wrote:

M$ are rotten to the core..

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don't use their products then.

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I never said their products are rotten. Just M$ themselves. Unless you have anything positive to contribute chenks..

[#9]

you've been given plenty of positive contributions already in the thread, i suggest you act on those.
strange that you seem to separate Microsoft the business and Microsoft the products.
however, as said, if you feel they are "rotten to the core" then use products from a business that aren't.

[#10]

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@HairyMcbiker wrote:
What I used to do with an old server I had (Compaq ML370 beast of a pc) was put it in the attic, on 24/7 running my mail server. Then if I needed access vnc into it.
But as has been said, probably hdd scans being done, or win finishing downloading win10 😉

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Yeah I remember you mentioning that years ago!

Unfortunately I can't do that.. rented place.. missus not liking cables.. unable to get into the loft.. so that ones out.

I could put it into the garage.. but there is no power out there too.. plus while i could easily drill a hole through the garage wall and fit power, drilling a hole out of the house to feed a wire out is a problem because there are pipes and wires everywhere along the walls for the back garden which makes it a bit of a difficult job - i'm not good with pipes! Sure i could replace a cable.. but i'm not a plasterer either!

[#11]

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@shutter wrote:

Not an expert.... but... from what you have said... two things come to mind.....

1. you said it never did this when I was using it all the time...   . It never used to do this when it was in daily use,

2. the last line gives some clue as to what may well be going on...    avast decides to kick in.. along with many other updaters

Perhaps, because it has not been used for long periods of time... many updates of various shapes and sizes are trying to catch up with themselves...  ( don`t forget, that some of the Windows updates run silently in the background checking for other (earlier) updates, before the original (silent) update can be installed, thus blocking further updates. )

Maybe you could "suffer" it being on for 24 hours  ( if you consider it safe to leave it unattended over night).. and see if the problem of the overworking hdd is still present after switching off for 24 hours..

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Most of what you're saying i've already thought of (thanks anyway).. but even now its been less than 24 hours since it last ran and did everything.. and its already at it since turning on.. it's hogging the hdd again. It's been up 5 minutes.. and the green LED only flickers off sometimes.. 

EDIT.. well around a minute after posting this it dropped its HDD hogging.. so it must be a ton of updates going on which is rather frustrating seeing as i seem to recall disabling auto updates on almost everything for this very reason. But I still don't think its 3rd party updates.. its always "system" in the resource manager that is showing the most hdd use.

The Avast service at least seems polite enough to wait until the system is done before it decides to pounce.

I really shouldn't need to wait 20 minutes to use a machine if i've not used it for a week.. it's unacceptable..

[#12]

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@chenks76 wrote:
strange that you seem to separate Microsoft the business and Microsoft the products.

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The products are pretty good though aren't they chenks. WinXP was good, Win7 is also good. It's what M$ decided to do with silently downloading Win10 to Win7 users that was rotten.. and yes that does mean the business. The Win7 product itself is not at fault - you know that as much as I do.

[#13]

Finally got around to looking at this again today when it went on yet again.. I couldn't remote desktop in.. no apache running on it, no ftp etc... so no other way to get in... and then remembered i had tightvnc installed after all that 

So eventually i was able to VNC into it.. (took a few attempts but got there in the end) and then noticed a svchost process using over 1GB of ram (not a big issue as the machine can handle it having 16GB.. but clearly something going on). Anyway i looked at the resource monitor for the disks and the same process was accessing files in the windows update location - softwaredistribution in the windows directory.

Quick google revealed it to be microsoft security essentials at work.. and i'm not the only one to have had this issue it seems. I've uninstalled it and just rebooted and so far.. (he says looking down seeing the HDD led nearly solid) it's not been a problem again... yet... and the hdd light has just gone back to normal while typing that.

[#14]

About a year ago Microsoft introduced a bug into Windows Update.  This affects a significant minority of Windows 7 machines and all those I have seen running Vista.  An entire processor core is consumed by an svchost process that spends its time looking in vain for Windows updates.  I know you have Windows Updates off but the symptoms sound similar.  If you had this problem it would not manifest if the computer is disconnected from the internet and restarted - it doesn't start looking for updates if there isn't an internet connection. 

[#15]

Sounds like it could be one of the malicious software removal windows updates, they tend to do a thorough scan of your disk which on older hardware can seriously bog it down. I wouldn't really recommend switching Windows updates or AV off, so would just try leaving it to do its thing whenever you're out of the house.