Vista Basic - Hard drive is always busy

[edong]

Boot drive is 160 GB in one partition. Indexing is not on. There are only few processes running and CPU performance is at 3%. Try defrag but it says hard drive is still okay. I restarted but still doing it. Any ideas before I re-install the OS? Vista is upgrade and I will try a clean install.

[FulciLives]

You need more memory i.e., RAM.

According to your COMPUTER SPECS you only have 512MB yet the "sweet spot" for Windows Vista is 2GB of RAM.

All of the excessive HDD access is probably due to the swap file being used due to low memory.

Aren't you glad you upgraded to Windows Vista?

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[redwudz]

One of Vista's 'features' is speeding up searches. To do this it sorts through your hard drive files fairly often. That is probably what you are hearing or seeing. I admit, it does do searches very fast, but the downside is that it uses the hard drive quite a bit more than XP. (Or W2000).

And if you don't have at least 1GB with Vista, you are crippling the OS. And turning off indexing doesn't make much of a change on the hard drive accesses. It's not really a big problem.

A clean install is definitely recommended with Vista. It can't use much of the files from older OS's anyway, and they will just take up space. Also if you have only one hard drive, it's almost always more efficient to have a second hard drive with any OS, especially with procedures like video editing.

[SCDVD]

One of Vista's 'features' is speeding up searches. To do this it sorts through your hard drive files fairly often.

Can that feature be turned off?

[redwudz]

I haven't found a easy way to turn if off, but there may be one out there. I thought it was doing Antivirus scans at first because it seemed to run fairly often and for bit of time. It does run the hard drives a fair amount.

I don't know that it causes any problems and if you have a quiet HD, you won't notice it that much.

We just have to assume MS knows what they are doing and it's a good thing.

[guns1inger]

While M$ says Vista will run in 512MB, and many hardware manufacturers are selling cheap Vista ready units with 512MB ram, it simply isn't enough. 1GB is a minimum to get reasonable performance, and more is better.

[redwudz]

I couldn't get the aero interface to run at 512MB, but it runs fine on 1GB. I went to 2GB, just to be on the safe side.

I should mention that I like Vista. It's new and I like trying out new things. I have no major complaints about the OS. It needs a fast CPU and a lot of RAM, but I have both. It looks nice also. It also runs all the programs I want to run and works well with my motherboard.

Is it better than XP? I don't know. It's different, though.

[FulciLives]

Do you think 2GB is really enough?

I was thinking of upgrading my current computer for VISTA and I was going to go 4GB to be "safe" but the price of memory for my old computer is very high so if 2GB is "good enough" then that would save me a lot of money!

I figure 2GB really is enough but since my computer isn't super fast by today's standards (it is a Intel P4 540 3.2Ghz CPU) I figured 4GB might help.

However my motherboard uses PC3200 memory and the cheapest 1GB sticks I can find are $62.99 so two of those vs four of those is a lot of money. That's $125.98 vs $251.96 and I can't use what I have now as it is only 512MB in two 256MB modules so if I got another two 256MB modules for matched memory I would MAX out at 1GB and I know that ain't enough for VISTA optimal performance.

Yes I'm still running WinXP but want to get the computer ready for VISTA.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[guns1inger]

I am running Vista business edition on an older Toshiba laptop (P4-M 1.7gHz) with 1.5GB ram and it is easily as fast as XP when running applications, and much faster than XP to boot up and shutdown. I suspect that 1.5 - 2 GB will be enough to do most things with.

[redwudz]

2GB seemed a good number to me. My understanding is that a 32 bit OS can only address a little over 3GB memory anyway. A 64 bit OS doesn't have that limitation, but I have XP64 bit on one computer and I don't see where there are that many programs that take advantage of it. That point steered me away from Vista 64 bit, along with driver availability issues with 64 bit OSs.

The cost of 2 X 1GB DDR2 RAM modules is fairly low at present. I'm using PC6400 DDR2 RAM, which I've seen as low as $40US apiece. If you get a matched set, you can run it in dual channel mode and get some extra performance.

Vista does seem to boot faster than XP. I've turned off UAC because I got tired of the constant warnings. That's been my only irritation so far. And I'm still waiting for Zone Alarm or similar to come up with a decent software firewall program as Vista seems lacking in that area.

[FulciLives]

This brings up a question I am unsure of regarding memory.

My current computer has 4 memory slots. Currently two are occupied with 256MB RAM modules (DDR 400 PC3200 184-Pin). So that gives me 512MB total.

Now can I add two 1GB sticks in the other two slots for a total of 2.5GB or do all slots have to be the same number (256MB or 1GB or whatever the case may be)?

Also do I have to use DDR 400 PC3200 184-Pin RAM modules or is there something else I can use that might be a hint cheaper?

Seems the newer memory is cheaper but it also seems to be 240-Pin so I assume I can't use that

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[redwudz]

DDR2 is incompatible with older memory or motherboards. DDR is 184 pin and DDR2 is 240 pin. Other than that, it's similar. It's mainly just timed differently where it uses more timing pulses per cycle. One explanation of DDR2 from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2_SDRAM

Most motherboards can mix memory sizes, but not all. You would want to check your motherboard manual. If you use a slower memory, the controller will likely run all your memory at that slower speed. You could check this with the CPU-Z program. That may defeat a lot of the gain of having more memory. There may also be some limitations on which memory slots can be used for different size RAM modules.

There are few programs that can use a lot of memory. Most that can are graphics programs like PhotoShop that try to hold the whole image in the RAM while working with it. Some CAD programs may also be able to use large amounts of memory. Most encoder programs just use what they need. Generally it's less than 500MB. Some video editors may be able to use more memory, but I don't know which ones, if any. A 64bit OS may be also able to make better use of larger memory sizes.

But if you can afford it, the combination of a motherboard with a dual core CPU and fast memory like DDR2 is a great combo. DDR2 memory is likely cheaper because they are producing a lot of it at present. Try buying a new stick of PC100 memory and it is likely fairly expensive as the demand is low, along with the available supplies.

EDIT: I should mention also that with the slower RAM modules installed, you may be able to set your memory speed back up to the speed of your faster modules, in effect, overclocking the slower ones. But depending on the MB and the RAM, you could have stability problems, so not really recommended most of the time.

[FulciLives]

Well I'll probably just buy two 1GB RAM modules (DDR 400 PC3200 184-Pin) and use that and dump the two 256MB sticks of RAM I have now. According to my motherboard manual the motherboard can accept 1GB sticks of RAM for a total of 4GB of RAM.

Sounds like 2GB should be enough for Windows Vista so that works for me.

Oh wait something else just occurred to me. Does it make any sort of "performance" difference to go with two 1GB RAM chips or four 512MB RAM chips? Either way that is 2GB total.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[TBoneit]

John, if you have four slots that should mean the mobo supports dual channel mode. The Manual will tell you which slots should be filled in pairs. Sometimes they are color coded. Dual channel mode lets the memory keep up to the 800Mhz FSB. It only matters that they be pairs in the proper slots. Otherwise you are giving away memory bandwidth. At present this computer has a 1 Gb and 2 512Mb in it due to budget constraints. Soon as I can I'll be adding a second 1 Gb Kingston of the same model for better speed. I was going to pull and use 2 other 512s from another computer. They work well in that computer but this one wouldn't even post with them.

To suumarize I'd keep the 2 x 256 along with the 2 x 1Gb.

[cwb]

Vista is not GREEN. It is totally 'resource incorrect'.

I got it on a laptop box, with a 1G ramstick, and it keeps the cpu at 20% before I touch the keyboard.

I have a d'top that ran XP for 4 years on a 128 M stick, and it is almost as fast as the new box. My other l'top has a half G (XP), and it is equally as fast as the Vistabox.

Vista is a '60's era V-8 - tons of power, and several gallons per mile.

[edong]

Vista is not GREEN. It is totally 'resource incorrect'.

I got it on a laptop box, with a 1G ramstick, and it keeps the cpu at 20% before I touch the keyboard.

I have a d'top that ran XP for 4 years on a 128 M stick, and it is almost as fast as the new box. My other l'top has a half G (XP), and it is equally as fast as the Vistabox.

Vista is a '60's era V-8 - tons of power, and several gallons per mile.

It's my son's PC and has 1GB DDR memory. He said he noticed it the moment he upgraded from XP. That's why I am thinking of a clean install after partitioning the boot drive. He did not partition the 160GB boot drive and only has 50GB unused. He also has a second 120GB HDD. I'm hoping the clean install will solve the problem. I have a Toshiba Celeron laptop with 512MB memory running Vista Basic but do not have this problem

[xxiangg]

You need more memory i.e., RAM.

According to your COMPUTER SPECS you only have 512MB yet the "sweet spot" for Windows Vista is 2GB of RAM.

All of the excessive HDD access is probably due to the swap file being used due to low memory.

Aren't you glad you upgraded to Windows Vista? :lol:

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

I agree. The memory is most likely the reason. I bought a laptop with 512M memory
recently. It was slow and I cound always hear the hard disk was busy all the time. The
memory usage shown that It used over 600M memory (a fresh now machine with only
Vista). After I changed the memory to 2G, it is more than 3 times faster for booting and
the hard disk is quiet once boot is done.

[buttzilla]

One of Vista's 'features' is speeding up searches. To do this it sorts through your hard drive files fairly often.

Can that feature be turned off?

Yes it can. Go to control panel/administrartive tools/services/windows search...left click on it and go to properties. change startup type to disable, click stop then apply before exiting. Also may i ad that windows defender is doing real time scanning in the back ground every time you click on something it scans it. This was causing write errors while burning and causing convertxtodvd to crash. You can turn of theis real time scanning from the defender console. i disabled it totally from services. I use webroot spy sweeper when i need to check for spyware. Far better then defender.

[cwb]

[ Far better then defender.

A can of 'Raid' is better than Defender to keep your box virus-free.

[redwudz]

edong, a 'clean' install of Vista is definitely recommended. I would also defrag the secondary drive and spend a little time cleaning out unused files there. If your HD was that full and you had the remains of the old OS and other 'debris', that could explain Vista doing a lot of indexing.

I don't use partitions on any of my computers. I just try to size the drives to the applications. My Vista box has two 320GB SATA Seagate HDs. The 320 is overkill for the OS drive, but I may occasionally store large files there, and the price was reasonable for the two HDs.

1GB RAM is probably sufficient for Vista, but Matched 1GB PC6400 RAM was on sale, so I got the package. 2GB works well in dual channel mode.

I'm using a AMD AM2 4800+ dual core CPU at present, and this runs as fast as my other machines on XP with 3800+ CPUs. Vista does work better in faster machines.

FulciLives, I would rather use 1GB RAM modules. They take up less space and give you more options for expansion in the future. Whether they would be faster or slower than four 512 modules, depends on the module design and the motherboard memory controller. It should be simpler for the controller to just address two modules instead of four. And you may find two 1GB modules are cheaper than four 512MB ones. This can get even more complicated if you want to run the memory in dual channel mode using 4 modules, unless you found a matched set of four.

EDIT: buttzilla, I turned off 'Defenser' first thing and now use AVG. I don't mind the indexing in Vista. It does make searches faster. I do keep it from trying to index over the LAN with my 2TB of server drives or it would probably run 24/7.

[buttzilla]

While were on the vista topic has anyone found a good software firewall to replace vistas built in one? I stll use xp at home and my favorite is Sygate but it does not work on vista. Anyone know of any? Please dont recommend anything from symantec or Mcafee. I want something that is small and don't eat resources.

[redwudz]

For Vista firewalls, everyone seems to be waiting for Zone Alarm to make the first offering. Vista's firewall is totally useless. Apparently it's no simple task to write up a decent firewall program for the OS.

[cwb]

If you're gonna' add ram for your Vistabox, read this article on compatibility.

It's the best article I've read that's also technically explained in understandable terms:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=77909774&m=501000044631

Specifically, pay close attention to placement of identical sized sticks with different speeds, CLOSER TO, AND FURTHER AWAY FROM THE CPU!!!

[buttzilla]

I updated my budget toshiba to 2 gigs of corsair value mem with no problem. I like to stick to corsair or kingston. i have never had problems with them. I tried cheaper PNY and had reboot problems. Stick to the name brand stuff.

[edong]

Ok.

Today, my son clean-installed Vista and added RAM to make it 2GB. Guess what, it's still doing it. The hard drive will become quiet for a while then it will become busy again. It is intermittent even without any open programs other than AVG and those running in the background.

[buttzilla]

Well I'll probably just buy two 1GB RAM modules (DDR 400 PC3200 184-Pin) and use that and dump the two 256MB sticks of RAM I have now. According to my motherboard manual the motherboard can accept 1GB sticks of RAM for a total of 4GB of RAM.

Sounds like 2GB should be enough for Windows Vista so that works for me.

Oh wait something else just occurred to me. Does it make any sort of "performance" difference to go with two 1GB RAM chips or four 512MB RAM chips? Either way that is 2GB total.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

I feel 4x512mb sticks give a slight performance boost. Especially if your board support dual channel technology. I used this settup for years.

[DereX888]

First of all: VISTA NEEDS HHDs.
Ditto.
(look it up on the web)

[FulciLives]

First of all: VISTA NEEDS HHDs.
Ditto.
(look it up on the web)

What the hell are you talking about?

Something like this? ---> CLICK HERE

Next time put up a link or explain it more ... otherwise don't bother!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[DereX888]

First of all: VISTA NEEDS HHDs.
Ditto.
(look it up on the web)

What the hell are you talking about?

Something like this? ---> CLICK HERE

Next time put up a link or explain it more ... otherwise don't bother!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

To show a direction isn't enough for you? I should also give you a lift too?!
well, **** off, use google

[FulciLives]

First of all: VISTA NEEDS HHDs.
Ditto.
(look it up on the web)

What the hell are you talking about?

Something like this? ---> CLICK HERE

Next time put up a link or explain it more ... otherwise don't bother!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

To show a direction isn't enough for you? I should also give you a lift too?!
well, **** off, use google

Now you are just being the hole of the ass you were being before. *******.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman