Hard drive accessing when idle, Windows XP 64

[Potato]

Hi,

I recently installed Windows XP x64 and the hard drive accesses intermittently even when the computer is idle with no active programs. I turned off automatic updates, but it still does it. I have used Windows Update and installed all the latest patches, but I have not installed any other programs. I downloaded Filemon to see the HDD activity and every so often Windows will search for a file called "netshellicon" and it will indicate "NOT FOUND." Has anyone else experienced problems like this?

 

[bobrownik]

idle doesnt mean that your harddrive is not going to be accessed,

your harddrive will always be accessed ,if not by programs then by other services running on your system

 

[mikeblas]

Running FileMon from systinternals will show you in short order which programs are accessing which files.

 

[[Spectre]]

netshellicon huh......do you have media player 10 installed?

 

[nessus]

netshellicon huh......do you have media player 10 installed?

Or is file indexing enabled to perform faster searches?

 

[Potato]

Yes, I have media player 10 installed. I have the problem even after I disabled file indexing. Any ideas?

 

[[Spectre]]

Yes, I have media player 10 installed. I have the problem even after I disabled file indexing. Any ideas?

Roll back to the previous version of media player if you can. Just a hunch on my part but I think it might help.

 

[mikeblas]

Any ideas?

Get FileMon from SysInternals.com. It'll show you exactly what files are being accessed and when.

 

[[Spectre]]

Get FileMon from SysInternals.com. It'll show you exactly what files are being accessed and when.

First post:

Hi,

I downloaded Filemon to see the HDD activity and every so often Windows will search for a file called "netshellicon" and it will indicate "NOT FOUND." Has anyone else experienced problems like this?

 

[Potato]

I tried to roll back Windows Media Player to a previous version, but it won't let me.

The hard drive intermittently goes "tick, tick" - not like it's really reading/writing much. It sounds almost like a loud clock. The hard drive is a new Hitachi Deskstar 250GB.

Also, Windows Task Manager shows 7 instances of svchost.exe running, one using up to 30,700K memory. Is this normal? FileMon also shows svchost.exe to be active when the computer is idle, often performing "QUERY INFORMATION."

Additional information about the "netshellicon" problem - FileMon shows windows searching for a file netshellicon from several locations C:\Windows\netshellicon, C:\Windows\system\netshellicon, C:\Windows\system32\netshellicon, C:\Windows\system32\WBem\netshellicon, C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\netshellicon

FileMon shows about 25 lines of search and "NOT FOUND" results at a time. It does this every so often.

 

[[Spectre]]

I tried to roll back Windows Media Player to a previous version, but it won't let me.

Nuts...sorry last time I saw a post about an issue with netshellicon WMP was the culprit. Sorry.

 

[mikeblas]

Also, Windows Task Manager shows 7 instances of svchost.exe running, one using up to 30,700K memory. Is this normal? FileMon also shows svchost.exe to be active when the computer is idle, often performing "QUERY INFORMATION."

Yes, it is normal. SVCHOST is the generic service host. A lot of system services are baked into it, in one exe, rather than giving a bunch of smaller services different executables. Tasklist will show which services are running in which instance.

Additional information about the "netshellicon" problem - FileMon shows windows searching for a file netshellicon from several locations C:\Windows\netshellicon, C:\Windows\system\netshellicon, C:\Windows\system32\netshellicon, C:\Windows\system32\WBem\netshellicon, C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\netshellicon

I've never seen FileMon attribute activity to "Windows"; it should be listing a particular process. Which process is it mentioning?

 

[Potato]

The process that keeps performing "query information" for netshellicon is "explorer.exe:1488"