Hard drive going berserk

robbie1876

Wonder if anybody can me on this annoying problem please:

When I boot up the PC into Windows 98SE, 4 out of 5 times the hard drive goes nuts for about 5 minutes solid, like its rearranging the drive or writing some huge file or something. This happens after Windows is fully loaded, and there is no sign of any program activity or anything trying to open itself. The mouse icon is just the normal arrow, no hourglass waiting icon.

The PC is usable during this time but is terribly slow, obviously. I have Norton Personal Firewall and Anti-Virus 2002 running, but they've been there long before this problem developed.

Can somebody please give me a few noobie-type pointers on this, cos it's doing my head in.

PC is crap: 1Ghz AMD, 10Gb drive (8.5Gb full), 128 RAM.

Ta very much

Tivoli

1)start
2)run...
3)type msconfig press ok

4)click on startup tab

5)un check a box except....
scanregistry
taskmonitor
the 2 loadpowerprofiles
and also any pointing to the norton antivirus folder

6)reboot, then repeat from step 1 until problem is solved

robbie1876

Thanks tlachta, appreciate the help.

I've been working through what you suggested since last night. Still more to try, but I've since found out that the hard drive activity begins only when an internet connection is made, which used to be automatically when the PC started until I turned it off.

Is this significant? I'll keep going through the startup stuff, but I wonder could the problem be elsewhere now?

Thanks,

Robbie

Kai

Have you tried updating Norton to include the newest viruses. If the activity starts when you connect then it may be a virus sending mail in the background. I think the SObigVirus does this.
You can get virus removal tools from
www.symantec.com.

also when you boot up do CTRL + ALT + DEL and click tasklist, go to processes and keep an eye on the new processes that start when you connect to the internet, it may be something different to a virus.

Giblet

Get the following software:

AVG Antivirus : Free edition

Zonealarm firewall : Free edition

Spybot Seak and Destroy

Stinger

These are all free and very effective.

Zonealarm free edition has an annoying splash screen on start up, to remove it, follow the following steps.

Type "regedit" in run, and find the following folder:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Zone Labs\ZoneAlarm

Edit the Showlogo value to say '0'

Then add -nosplash and -nopopup to the end of the path of the shortcut in the startup folder (check the startup folder in the start menu and right-click the shortcut to change it)

This will help you find anything wrong with your pc.
The downside is that your PC will have to startup AVG and Zonealarm everytime the PC starts to be effective.

Tivoli

don't install more then one antivirus program, make sure to keep updating the one you have, about once a week should do

adaware will remove, erm..all ad ware

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/



a lot of ad ware and viruses use the startup entries to make sure they are re-started with your pc, they can lay idle untill you connect online, so un check a few more.

another thing to check is the scheduled tasks list, try stopping the task schedular see if that helps

Giblet

Spybot > adaware.

Avg is antivirus, I prefer it over Norton, but whatever you want to use should be fine.

Zonealarm is a firewall.

Stinger is a standalone utility that looks for certains viruses that AVG won't find.

Sleipnir

How about the basics first?
Search the HD for large files; more than 100mb and see if there's anything huge and unneccessary.
2nd, run a full scandisk and then defrag.
I doubt it's a virus. If a virus takes that long to load up, it wouldn't b a very well written virus.

Giblet

It's when he accesses the internet, which might suggest some adware or a virus sending stuff over the connection.

Tivoli

Sorry Giblet

Spybot > adaware.

never connected spyware with adware, doh

robbie1876

Thanks for the help guys.

Well, after disabling all that start menu stuff, scanning for viruses and using Symantec's SoBig removal tools (nothing found btw), reinstalling Norton just in case, defregging and deleting a couple of large .avi files that were knocking about... I finally found the problem:

Steam

Aarrgh! how can a program be so crap and annoying! It was doing all this funky stuff in the background without making itself visible on the taskbar or in the task list.

So I guess I'll tackle Valve with my problem. They have a forum on there, I'll see if anybody else is having the problem.

Again, thanks for the great help guys! (At least I have a much cleaner system now!!)

Tivoli

glad that you got it sorted

well done

Sleipnir

Originally posted by Giblet
It's when he accesses the internet, which might suggest some adware or a virus sending stuff over the connection.

ah. Oops, I missed that bit.