[Geezer (OP)]

I was having problems with my PC (running Vista). Sometimes the disk drive would start thrashing so much that I could not even get Task Manager to run! I think I have it under control now.

Anyone experiencing similar issues?

[RD]

Could be anything !  (something caught in a loop ?)

Have a look a the friendly version of Problem report: put "problem" in Vista search box, then click on "View problem history"  ...

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/troubleshoot-with-the-problem-reports-and-solutions-feature-in-windows-vista/765


Process explorer is like task manager on steroids: it'll tell you everything that's going on in windows so may help you track down the problem ... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

[Geezer (OP)]

Thanks RD.

I found some suggestions here that seem to have helped quite a it http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2262&page=1 (sorry about all the ads!)

[RD]

I found some suggestions here that seem to have helped quite a it http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2262&page=1

If the thrashing is a recent problem then I doubt it's due to indexing, Vista has been indexing since you got it.

Unless you've just plugged in a big external harddrive (say 1Tb) you may want to switch off indexing on that drive, (I do), coz it will take an eternity.

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Vista will automatically defrag if it is idle, which does cause the hard drive to be constantly active for tens of minutes.   

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[Geezer (OP)]

I had previously disabled indexing, and it didn't seem to make any difference when I did that.

I think my issue was Superfetch, although I nailed up the page size at the same time as disabled Superfetch, so that may have been a factor too.

Now, when the system is idle, the HD is idle too.