Vista Excessive Disk Activity

I am trying to install Windows Vista Home Premium and make a stable PC with all compatible hardware (Core 2 Duo PC) and updated drivers. Though everything is installed and ready don’t know what’s wrong the disk activity light remains ON constantly. After spending time on the same I came to know that there is a tool called Perfmon. When I ran this tool it showed me 2 distinct types of disk activity. One that is caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. This was probably due to Superfetch. And second was because of nonstop writes to various files on C Drive.

Any help what could be done to fix this ?

Even I’m facing the same problem on my Vista laptop. Turning off superfetch service doesn’t seems to be working. Not just this, I have turned off many things such as indexing, defragmenting, paging file including superfetch but yet the disk activity lights keep on solid. Hope someone is having experience with this and can help us out.

I am not a computer freak and also new to Vista. Was facing the same problem recently on my computer. While searching the service I came through one named “server”. I don’t know with which it was related but I just turned it off and restarted the computer. Guess what the disk read problems i had disappeared and it also improved my bootup and shutdown.

This also happened on one of my friends laptop and in his case turning off indexing and Superfetch/ReadyBoost fixed the issue.

I also find annoying the behaviour that Windows writes something to $Logfile and $Mft every couple of seconds. It also seems for me that it may be unhealthy for disk drive.

Sorry for digging out this topic, but I have already browsed almost everything possible on the web and my symptoms look exactly the same as these here described. I'm also not using Vista, but Windows 7 64-bit.

I tried everything:
- Indexing - DISABLED
- System Restore - DISABLED
- Pagefile - DISABLED
- Windows Defender - DISABLED
- NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate in registry - set to 1
- Superfetch - currently enabled, but I tried with disabled too - it's not the cause
- Antivirus - ESET NOD32 - it also happens with protection turned off (however I haven't try uninstalling it completely yet)

Do you have some suggestions what else may cause this behavior?

hershley444, I saw your posts on this topic in some other forums... Maybe did you find the solution to this problem?

I'm having the same exact issue. It's so painful. This might be the last windows machine for me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ssuing8825

I'm having the same exact issue. It's so painful. This might be the last windows machine for me.

---

What kind of problem are you facing, can you elaborate it or specify it in more details? Disk activity (at any time, not just after booting) can be due to lots of things, including:

1. The indexing service, which makes your searches faster, and is thus a GOOD THING
2. Superfetch, which speculatively preloads files into RAM that it "expects" you to need (based on your usage patterns so far), which greatly increases response times and is thus a GOOD THING

I started experiencing this very same thing over a week ago. Finally did a reboot today and got an Adobe update notification.

Installed it and it went away.

Just my 2 cents.

Hi I have researched this and can turn it all off.

Here is the thing aka the RUB.
The only thing i would keep on is the event Viewer to track problems
and that's pretty much it.

You don't need things wirting and reading all the time Especially when your not doing anything.
The system only needs to write at startup to the events and that's it.
if something is recording data all the time and writing ? and your not doing anything ?
Doesn't that make you wonder " WHY "

Why did i buy a computer ? to use it lol -> not for it to use it's self haha!

It doesn't matter how much money you throw at a machine and how fast it is.
= That crap doesn't resolve the problem for anyone.

First I will give you some hack thingies that will help you as it did me.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Improve SATA hard disk performance (Convert from IDE to AHCI)
Open Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci.
Right click on the Start registry DWORD and select Modify.
Set the value to 0 and click OK.

For RAID Adapters
RAID adapter or other interface try the following:

Open up Registry Editor and naviage to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV
OR HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor.
Repeat the steps above.
---------------------------------------
Here is the regirsty hack to speed up everything on Windows every Version

Hkey local machine
Software
Microsoft
Windows
Current Version

Now add new keys as string values
name them like this

1 then add C:\
2 then add C:\Windows
3 then add C:\Windows\System32
4 Then add D:\
5 Then add C:\Temp

That was my original hack back in windows 95 and works on all windows.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now lets do the stop everything


use perfmon.exe /res
and check what is thrashing the hard drive aka check the disk activity
-----------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters.
Set the EnablePrefetcher and EnableSuperfetch values to 0.
-----------
Go to Services and stop = Superfetch service =>STOP and DISABLE
-----------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Filesystem

In the right pane, look for the value named NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation.
If the value exists, it's probably set to 0
-----------
TURN OFF = Windows Error Reporting Serice and Windows Defender!
Turn OFF = Desktop Window Manager Session Manager = Disable this to save memory and speed.
Turn Off = Indexing Service aka The Indexing Service deprecated in Windows® 7 has been replaced by Windows Search.
TURN OFF = Windows Search and use the addresses bar in Explorer....
aka Windows 95 key and E on the keyboard.
----------------
NOW
lets turn off the logging crap as well
go here in windows7
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Performance Information and Tools\Advanced Tools
Then choose the one that says Performance monitor
on the left plane choose Data collector sets
NEXT
Event Trace Sessions and turn off what you like
NEXT
on the left plane again choose Startup Event Trace Sessions
And stop all the crap you don't need running all the time there.

Now open this as admin by right clicking it on the desktop
and chose to run it as admin
if I may suggest spybot search and destroy anti-spyware
use that program and choose File->Advanced
Then click down and hit the tools tab thingy
Then on the left pane again choose System Startup
and you can uncheck what you don't want starting up.

When ever you run into things writing to log files ?
Turn off the things that write to them :)

I hope this helps someone. Good Luck.

on the left plane again choose Startup Event Trace Sessions
And stop all the crap you don't need running all the time there.
here is how you disable them -> double click them then click on the tab called Trace Sessions and choose disable
By un-checking the enabled box.