[bartholimew]

Here's a couple XP problems my buddy has on an Intel ASUS PE4MoBo, 2.4 Ghz Pentium

1. Hard drive keeps active. Constantly caching maybe? He has a new 80 gb maxtor and Norton System works is loaded. It really slows the system down while this hard drive is constantly reading.

2. ATI radeon 9500, fails a couple self tests with Direct X. Yet I can't find direct x anywhere, did a search and came up with an empty Dirx directory, reloaded Dirx 9.0 but I can't find the set up icon for testing.

 

[Zvalkor]

1. Press ctrl-alt-delete and bring up the Windows task manager. Select the process tab. Look in the cpu column. This shows how much cpu resources each process is using. While the hard drive is constantly being accessed check which processes are using the most cpu. This may help to narrow down what exactly is causing the hard drive to be constantly accessed.

2. The directx utility is most easily accessed by going to start-->run then typing dxdiag.

 

[Pseudocyber]

It may be the system works program. If he closes the program, does the disk activity go back down to normal?

It may also be either: low memory, low hard drive space, or incorrect virtual memory settings. If the system is constantly paging the memory and going to the disk for virutual memory you will experience those kinds of symptoms.

 

[johnwill]

I doubt this is normal, I'd suspect a virus or spyware. Has he done a complete virus and spyware scan?

 

[Sancho]

Could be that gay Search Indexing feature.

Start > Run > Services.msc

Find Indexing Service > Right Click > Properties > set to disabled.

Restart. see if that fixes it.