Constant disc access & processing

[Griffin NoName]

I've got sick and tired of this problem. My laptop is whirling away at some task or other which prevents what I actually want to do. For example if I am fetching a web page it can take as long as 2 minutes and then when it does half appear it needs to be recovered, while all the thrashing is buzzing away. Goodness knows what it is doing. It's making my laptop almost unusable.

Search indexing is off so it's not that. I have used the basic monitoring tools supplied with Vista but unable to pinpoint what it is doing.

Any suggestions on how to find out what is going on?

[The Meromorph]

It's been taken over by a Zombiebot. It's constantly trying to a) talk to Aliens, or b) transfer money to Nigeria or c) assist the Chinese Government.
Use Task Manager to look for suspicious processes.

[Griffin NoName]

I have looked for stuff via Task Manager without any success. Except for McAfee doing hundreds of disc reads. I hate McAfee but BT supply it free. I hate it as much as I hate Norton. The other thing that does hundreds of disc reads is System. Or scvhost. Or explorer. Or perfmon....... nothing stands out as worse than anything else and everything looks like normal processes.

Thanks for your other suggestions. I did wonder if I have been taken over by SETI.

It's almost bad enough to make me leave the internet. So if I disappear you'll know why.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

If you are running SETI and give it priority it will eat you machine completely, just so you know.

[Griffin NoName]

My machine still has a screen and keyboard so I doubt it has been eaten.

How would one know if taken over by SETI - I thought you had to sign up.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Hence why I said if you are running SETI (ie, you went to their site, downloaded the program, installed it, run it, downloaded work units, and finally and more critically, went to the task manager to alter the priority of the tasks to high priority) the program would take over all resources (ie, eat it) and the computer would be pretty much useless for anything else.

Now SETI doesn't install by itself, so chances are that a) you have malware or b) your hard drive is dying.

[Griffin NoName]

Out of interest, why loads of disc access when I'm not doing anything if disc dying?

[Aggie]

It's been taken over by a Zombiebot. It's constantly trying to a) talk to Aliens, or b) transfer money to Nigeria or c) assist the Chinese Government.
Use Task Manager to look for suspicious processes.

Bitcoin mining? No seriously, many botnets use hijacked computers to work on the puzzles necessary to earn bitcoins.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Out of interest, why loads of disc access when I'm not doing anything if disc dying?

The system is reading and writing all the time, but when the disk is dying, the process multiples itself because more areas are harder to read, are marked unusable, and/or require moving still healthy data to non compromised areas.
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The alternative of a "process" (malignant or not) being responsible is equally valid.

[Griffin NoName]

My laptop was a bit more informative today and sent me a message. It told me that I was running out of memory. That hardly surprises me. I'm still using IE9 and I have always been  sure it leaks. I am starting to use Firefox a bit more as there are now things which simply won't work in IE even using compatibility. I definitely need a new laptop. Been waiting for Windows 10, tho free upgrades from Windows 7 - don't want the bother. It is strange when you get a new machine with more memory, disc, etc, than you think you could ever need, and then you need more.

I'll run a memory diagnostics but probably not much I can do about it.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Wait, how old... better, how much RAM memory do you have? Windows 7 is incredibly nice but will have problems running below 2 GB of RAM and ideally should have either 3.5* GB for 32 bits or as much as you can in 64 bits (4GB+). Win 8.1 uses more memory than W7 but not much more, but chances are that W10 will use even more.

If you don't know how to get that info:
- go to your Start menu
-hover over Computer
-do a right click
-select Properties

Under the System subsection it will tell you how much Installed Memory (RAM) you currently have.

*In reality 32 bit versions only can use 3.2GB but you need some memory for the video as it is usually shared.