Hello, I'm having problems in Windows Vista, something keeps continually accessing the hard drive. Could it be a virus? Possibly - I have many, many automatic updates that fail to install from the auto-updater. But if it's a virus, SpyBot can't find it.

I suspect that this may be Some Windows Vista Thing (SWVT) that doesn't care that I want to run my programs, it's just doing its own job and to hell with user experience. If so, how can I track this process down and kill it?

I've tried the task/process manager, which only lists CPU usage, not disk usage. There don't seem to be any likely culprits in the tasks with > 0 CPU. How can I hunt this thing down?

How much RAM do you have installed? It sounds like the system is accessing a pagefile. That would be my first guess...

I suspect the Indexing Service in the Drawing Room with the Candlestick.

Yes, just yesterday a coworker said he uninstalled Vista because it was continuously indexing files. Someone else said there was a way to disable it, so you should check the services to disable it.

I have 1 gig of RAM. But I don't think it's paging anything... nothing's running! I'll check out this indexing service.

I know Vista tries to load the most frequently used applications into RAM, but surely that can't explain the volume of activity I'm seeing.

Isn't that a bit low for vista? Like another maybe... 100% might be good.

Dude, you need to run with at least 2 GB of ram with Vista if you don't want paging. A coworker has it installed, and of the 4GB he has, .75GB is taken away for video memory. All because he only has a 256MB video card. My XP machine has more RAM for programs as a result (though only like .25GB, but still)

Where do you get the 750MB for video figure? I have two video cards and dwm.exe is using 32MB of RAM.

I have 2GB of RAM and 1GB is currently being used by Windows and applications with the rest being used for cache.

Open up the Resource Manager under the Windows Task Manager / Performance. Click on Disk to see what is using it.

Untrue. I guess we must assume that the more memory you give it, the more it will take. I didn't know that the OS could allocate more memory for the video card if it wanted to, though. Seems awfully useless and wasteful, especially for someone who doesn't even play video games. (I'm hinting disbelief at the statement regarding video memory above.)

My laptop has 1GB of RAM with the video card capable of stealing up to 256MB I believe. (I don't recall how much Vista lets it take.) After disabling unneeded things like the file indexing service and other unneeded items, it runs like a charm. No noticeable slowdowns or odd fits of disk activity. Not that I use it much, but still...

I'm surprised nobody took the bait:

Yes, you installed Vista.

How do you know he installed Vista? Coulda come preinstalled on a computer he bought.

Is he running the 64 bit version? In that case go into BIOS and change the settings to allow extended memory. This isn't a vista issue, it's a hardware limitation.

Keep in mind if he's running the 32bit version don't do this, I only get 2GB of ram in XP now with this setting enabled.

I got the 750MB from the system properties (or whatever they may have renamed it to) because we were curious to know if 32-bit would display 4GB instead of 3.5GB like XP does. Basically, Vista gave us this breakdown of memory on his system:
RAM: 3.25GB
System video: 750MB
On board video: 256MB
Total video: 1GB

[edit] BTW, it's the 32-bit version. Also, I think it was (re)installed when he got it anyway because none of Dell's programs are anywhere to be seen.

Yeah if you are on a 32-bit operating system (Linux, Vista, etc), you aren't going to be able to address all 4GB. It will probably be closer to 3GB.

I've never seen such a thing under Vista.
I found it buried in the "View and print details" page. According to one source, it is "((Total System Memory – 512)/2 – Dedicated System Memory)"

For example, mine reads:

The "shared system memory" is allocated on demand and the number only represents a maximum amount. It is not reserved or guaranteed to be available.

But it still remains impossible to address 4GB with a 32-bit system (since other devices need to be memory mapped as well). And surely that's the source of "missing RAM" on your coworker's computer.

I've noticed this with XP as well. I keep getting this grambling from the HD like it is indexing files. I can sometimes get it to stop by accessing the hard drive from My Computer, but that does not always work. I believe it may be a virus or spyware, but I am not too worried right now. My Linux box is fine, so hehehe...if it is a virus, well let us just say paybacks are a bitch! Can viruses and or spyware still be active on a drive when that drive is not mounted? Say for example the drive infected has windows, but under Linux that drive is still making noise sometimes like it is being accessed. I can tell the difference between the two drives. It only seems to happen when that drive gets mounted. Maybe a root kit installed on my windows box?

I fully recommend these tools to any Windows users who want to know what their computer is doing.
Windows SysInternals

Specifically , Process Explorer kicks task managers butt hardcore.8-)

Filemon File activity monitor.
Diskmon Disk activity monitor.
Regmon Registry monitor

Lots of other cool stuff.

- Edit -
- Don Freeman -
All that disk access you hear might be your anti-virus on access scanning in progress. I have a copy of Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9 that I got super cheap ($10) from nothingbutsoftware.com. Every time I want to save a file my AV thinks it needs to scan the entire database that MDI uses (15 - 20 seconds wasted)

- 2nd Edit -

Another cool program from SysInternals. Rootkit Revealer

Now, I had always understood that resources are freed up for applications when required. So it wouldn't matter if you're running a resource hog like Vista, when you actually play a game, the game should run at roughly the same speed as on XP. Is this true?

I'll give that a try the next time I'm in Windows.

I installed it. It was free from the University.

Edgar Reynaldo: Thanks! I'll try those also, and see what I can discover.

Turning of indexing appeared to do nothing... hard drive access was still continuous. But it doesn't feel like paging... when I get paging on other OSes, the performance degrades severely as I wait for things to be loaded from disk. I would see delays when I first start the app, when I exit it and re-load Windows desktop stuff, when I load new areas in a game, etc. I don't see that here.

In my case, it's like there's another process running in the background, competing for resources. The game is Morrowind, from 2002, and it's running on a high-end machine I bought a couple months ago. There's no way it should run slowly.

I've had no problems with hard drive access. The indexer only runs in the background, so that shouldn't be a problem...

If you have a spare USB flash drive (512+MB is best), you could plug it in and use it as a fast cache via "ReadyBoost." It might help determine whether or not low memory is an issue.

Well, it looks like it is paging after all. The resource monitor reports 50 megs/minute being written to pagefile.sys. I guess I'll throw another stick of RAM in there and see what happens. It doesn't help that the auto-updater keeps trying and failing to install the same updates over and over again.

I tried using my USB key for Ready Boost, but it's not supported somehow.

Thanks for all the help!

[joke]
Hmm... Filemon, Diskmon, Regmon? Are those three legendary pokemons or digimons?
[/joke]

Heh, you gave everyone a cookie except me and yet I was correct about the pagefile. That's the last time I help you, McCallum.

Ahh... oops, I thought I gave everyone a cookie.

They're bad for you anyways.

True that.

Anyway, glad to hear you found the problem. Sounds like Vista is one memory-hungry beast. At this point I can't think of a good reason to install Vista. But if and when I get a new computer I'll probably have to deal with it (Vista). Hopefully a few bugs will be worked out by then.

Digimons of course!8-)

My laptop is running Vista with 512Mb RAM and 1.6 GHz processor.

Are you using the AeroGlass feature though?