Continuous Hard Drive Activity Help

[ShortBus]

Hi Yall...I am not sure if this is the right section but here it goes.

 

My Father has a Dell laptop (Dell Ispiron 8500). Last night a random program wanted to start installing, something called ALS? He does not remember. He clicked no; unknown to him was that Windows XP was also trying to do an update. He then cancelled both. He boots up the laptop and now the hard drive has continuous activity. Any program he tries to open take 5+ minutes to open and double that to restart or power down the laptop. The CPU usage is less that 5% in the task manager. We have also done the system restore twice but no luck. The system restore takes 30+ minutes and says “unable to restore” when it finally finishes . I have done a Google search but to no avail. Any input is greatly appreciated, I not know where to start.

 

Thanks for reading

[Evil_inc]

check for all recently installed files. Sounds like you have a bug.

[ShortBus]

I was thing a bug but I hope not. Any other ideas? It is his work computer and he is out of action.

[MACarter02]

sounds like the flu to me.

 

try safe mode, and scan for viruses?

[jelly]

I had the same problem happen to me last night also! I did a virus sacn in safe mode and nothing came up. I have noted that to cpu will now sit at like 5% usage! I wounder if it has to do with the new hotfixs from M$!?

[red930]

From the information presented, it seems to me that you have one of two things going on:

 

1. Possible corrupted cylinder 0 on the hard drive. A manufacturer's low-level format would correct this.

 

2. Possible impending hard drive failure due to a "butterfly effect" (it's where the drive tries to calibrate itself after every read or write function).

 

I'd do a low-level format then try to do a complete restore before doing anything else.

[laserred]

Yeah, I'd try the safe mode and first thing turn off automatic updates- MS is notorious for issuing hotfixes and updates that are not fully developed and cause many more problems and instability than those they were intended to fix. Then, try to uninstall the hotfixes, do a virus scan (trendmicro.com is a good online one), and if that does not resolve it, use the Windows CD to repair the installation. Automatic Update is the Devil! Use Autopatcher instead, much easier, safer, and you get to control what gets installed.

[ShortBus]

Thanks for the info...I will try it!

[cuoficr]

look for one of the network service svchost.exe processes in task manager, if one of them is abnormally high on mem usage end the process and see what happens. Same thing happened to me a month or so ago.

[laserred]

Yeah, that bug with svchost was directly related to an Automatic Update issue. Consumed an inordinate amount of memory and like 30-40% CPU depending on the system. Like I said, Autopatcher is alot safer than randomly allowing the goons at MS to install whatever they please on your rig.

[red930]

If the drive DOES NOT have critical data on it, you might as well replace it since hard drives are so cheap.

 

If the drive DOES have critical data on it, you should try Spinrite from Gibson Research.

 

http://www.grc.com

[Evil_inc]

I may have caught what you have. I was having constant drive access until I shut down svchost and now I am getting windows file protection warnings.