Why Does Hard Drive Activity Light Constantly Blink
Dec 29, 2009
I upgraded my HP Pavilion a1540n Desktop to Windows 7 a week ago. Ever since, my hard drive light constantly blinks. After looking at the disk activity in the Windows Resource Monitor and doing some research I am leaning towards the page file as the problem. I am not sure if that is in fact the problem as there seems to be quite a few processes creating high disk activity, including Firefox profile cache, $Logfile, and MpWppTracing.bin. I only have 1GB of RAM. Would I be better served to add RAM before doing anything else like using Cacheman?
I installed Windows 7 RC. When ever I am booted into Windows 7 one of my hard drives (probably not system drive - sounds like my secondary storage drive) is constantly working. Not very much but still making sounds.
I have completely turned off indexation, there is no automatic defrag going on. I have set a constant size to the paging file and there is no antivirus activity going on. The hard drive is making noise even when the system is idle for a long time and also when I am using it.
The processes tab in the task monitor shows no process that is using CPU.
I've been using computers since Win 3.0, but have recently built my own computer for the first time. Generally, everything works great right up until the point it doesn't.Sometimes my PC will randomly just "lock up". The screen freezes, the keyboard is completely unresponsive (including ctrl-alt-del), the mouse cursor is the spinning circle. The only way out is to hit the RESET button.It seems fairly random, and has happened while I was using iTunes, Outlook, or other programs.The one constant is that every time it happens, I can see that the HDD activity light is *solid*. It's not flickering / blinking like with normal HDD access, just solid. I don't know whether there is something truly being accessed, or whether the solid light is just a red herring.
Also, I don't know if the system is actually frozen, or whether there's something hogging the system to the extent it's so slow that it appears frozen. It's a pretty beefy system, so whatever it is would have to be really doing a number. I've only ever waited like 2 minutes before giving up.Given that every time it happens the HDD light goes solid, I have to suspect it's something with the hard drive subsystem, but I don't know how to begin troubleshooting whether it's a mobo SATA port issue, an Intel RST driver issue, a hard drive issue, a cable issue, or maybe it's not the hard drive at all!Here's some details (see more in my Systems Spec)Recently purchased DZ68BC mobo Prior to Windows 7 installed, verified mobo BIOS default was AHCI Installed Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium Win 7 appears to use AHCI After installing Windows, ran Intel utility to update/install all drivers, including Rapid Storage Technology drivers (did *not* update mobo BIOS) I am NOT running any RAID.Again, everything seems to work really nicely, right up until the point it decides to instantly freeze It's hard to troubleshoot because it's so random, I don't know when to expect it, and after it happens I can't bring up any tools (i.e. Resource Manager) to see what's going on.
I've been noticing after re-installing Win 7 that I get random floppy drive seeks and the hard drive light flashes like crazy and then everything is fine again.I have Clamwin AV,Spyware Blaster and Spybot S&D installed,but that's it,no Windows Defender or Essentials AV.Any ideas what causes this? It's a minor annoyance,but I just want to make sure it's not damaging anything.Also would Readyboost help me? I've got 2 gigs dual channel PC3200 ram(or I could go with 2.5 gig single channel PC2700)and a P4 at 3 gig until I can afford to upgrade my comp.This is my first post in quite awhile so I hope this is in the right place
I have just updated Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate to SP1, and my HDD light is constantly flickering? There is no discernable differnce in the performance of windows and it boots and runs fine, it's just that the light is a bright neon blue colour and is very distracting!It happens from the moment my desktop appears or when being online like I am now typing this. Can ANYONE please shed some light on this matter? I am at my wits end LOL!!!A friend did tell me that turning off SUPERFETCH in the list of running services might work. I did this when I originally bought and installed 7 as I was having the same problem then, this time however, it's not had ANY difference, I still get a BRIGHT blue light constantly dancing beneath my eyes.
I am little bit worried about my harddrive. Previously I had 80 gb harddrive and then I upgraded it to 320 gb. I have dell latitude d630 laptop with two operating system. Windows 7 and XP. When I use Windows 7 then my computer specially hard drive light stays on and mouse is busy and I have to restart my laptop however in my XP this problem is never seen. I also installed vista and deep formatted the hard drive but the problem still persists in windows 7. The system is normal but when I surf internet via mozilla or chrome. This problem arises. I have done everytrouble shooting I can chkdsk and everything but when I use chkdsk in my western digital harddrive, it says error. I am thinking its harddrive issue what do u say?
I am little bit worried about my harddrive. Previously I had 80 gb harddrive and then I upgraded it to 320 gb. I have dell latitude d630 laptop with two operating system. Windows 7 and XP. When I use Windows 7 then my computer specially hard drive light stays on and mouse is busy and I have to restart my laptop however in my XP this problem is never seen. I also installed vista and deep formatted the hard drive but the problem still persists in windows 7. The system is normal but when I surf internet via mozilla or chrome. This problem arises. I have done everytrouble shooting I can chkdsk and everything but when I use chkdsk in my western digital harddrive, it says error.
Its running Windows 7 (64 bit) 3 GB RAM, 2.2 ghz Processor. When it starts up and reaches to the windows login point the hard drive light stays on constantly and it the pc runs extreeeeeeeeeemly slow. I notice that this problem does not happen while in safe mode. I have restored my laptop to factory settings and the only software I have installed besides windows automatic updates is AVAST anti virus
I have a Dell Inspiron laptop. I was running Vista and about 2 weeks ago I decided to upgrade to Windows 7. After the upgrade, things worked beautifully, but a few days ago my hard drive began running constantly and still is. Whether I leave it alone or am working on it does not seem to matter, yet system performance seems unaffected by it.
I am a novice computer user so straight forward instructions or explanations are more than welcome.
After i lock the computer and leave for a bit, i come back to find my hard drive spinning constantly at 100 % reading and writing, but when i touch the mouse and move it it immediately goes away.I've tried disabling the Search Indexer, but that hasnt seemed to stop it. Scheduled defrag is off too. It's an Asus G73JW Laptop?
I have a lenovo pc 9210 all diags pass all hardware is good. was running xp fine loaded vista ok loaded windows 7 32 bit runs ok, needs windows 7 64 bit...loaded windows 7 64, reboots after load begins first time setup then completes as normalreboots ....and hard drive light blinks .... then starts to start windows 7 but gets the four colored dots then just sits there no more hd lights no , no nothing.
Whenever I start my windows hard drive led is constantly on and my laptop is slow as hell. If I continue using it sometimes I get blue screen but always I have to restart at last. Second time I boot it's ok. I disabled all unnecessary services. I had got the same problem with Vista. Now I upgraded to this. 7 was working fine but now the same problem is back. I use acer aspire 6920 with 4g ram and 250gb western digital. 2.00 Ghz core due.
When I play 1080p video and there is lot of disk activity at the same time (virus database updates, someone copy something trough local network, DVD is burning...anyway - lot of hard disk activity) then the video shows very poor performance - stops and starts for sec, then stops, slideshows and so on (also with sound). When this happens the CPU is about 50-60% so CPU is not an issue. I also set the media player priority to high in task manager - still bad performance when hard drive activity is high.
I have AMD CPU 3GHz, 3,5MB RAM, 1GB ATI Radeion HD4850
I DID NOT HAVE ANY SUCH ISSUE ON XP...whats the problem?
On my Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit machine the harddisc shows a lot of activity after the screensaver starts.As soon as I end the screensaver this stops.Of course it is not possible to check that in task manager (unless I missed some recording functionality of the task manager).This only happens after approx 8pm.I was looking for some planned maintenance stuff or some antivirus things but I cannot find any.Is there some tool, that records the processes that access the harddisc? Are there any built in tools for such a task from Windows 7?
I have Windows 7 and no matter if I am using Chrome or Internet Explorer, the color of the text that appears is so faint that it almost blends in with the background. Instead of black text, the text is like a gray color. It is so profoundly irritating I cannot stand it! It isnt like this on all websites. For instance, as I am typing this post. The text color is black and does not blend in with the white background. Although, it could have better resolution.
I have put a SSD as my main drive. Running Windows 7 64-bit. I am now concerned that Windows 7 will wear this drive out as the drive light flashes constantly about 1-2 times per second. What could it possibly be doing sitting idle.
I got it personalized into a syringe but i dont know if thats it... because its been a syringe for a year now but just now its been having issues.Not sure if there is something just trying to load over and over again or not.. I checked my services and there was nothing totally taking over anything.These 2 weeks my CPU usage was 100% and never ever went down in that time.But today, its in the 20's.Not sure if thats an issue either because its been blinking even before today.
Windows 7 Professional 64bit. When I try to perform a restart, the computer goes into oblivion. Drive light flickers a bit but I've let it rest over an hour and it didn't restart. Have to press the reset button. Otherwise everything seems OK. I've run deep scans with Malwarebytes and Kaspersky and no warnings.
I noticed that when I save anything using Google Chrome (my primary browser), whether it be Pictures or Websites, my three gadgets (calendar, clock, weather) blink and flash to the top of my processes. I've tried disabling them and renabling them, but it doesn't work. Turning them off obviously solves the problems.
My keyboard has been not working properly. After 1 automatic update from Windows in October, I was unable to use my keyboard or the touchpad unless I went to the keyboard function window and adjusted the blink speed of the cursor. Afterwards, I could at least type.
I have since deleted the driver and reinstalled it, rather it was reinstalled automatically on restart. It has given me use of the touchpad, but now some of the buttons are not associated properly. I intend to type an L and a 3 comes out.
I have a hard drive I want to backup to a 64gb flash drive and then restore it to another different hard drive than where it came from. I have windows 7 and office on my laptop and I want it on my desktop pc. There isn't close to 64gb of info on my laptop so it should be fine even though the hard drive says I have 160gb. It is all free space except for those programs.
I recently purchased a OCZ Diesel 8GB USB drive and i plugged it into my computer and at first everything was fine then I tried to transfer some files onto it and kept hearing the "dadum...Dadum" as the drive kept connecting and disconnecting and now when I plug it in it wont stop doing that. Any suggestions on how I can stop this from happening or do I need to return the drive?I tried different usb ports on the front and back of my case and I put in my old USB and it worked fine. I also tried it on another computer and when installing the drivers it got hung up on "searching pre configured driver folders" and the same thing happened.
The Offender DVD/CD Drive: MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ8A2ASW
Computer: Asus u56e laptop, windows 7 64bit.
Whenever I open up itunes, or I open up winamp, or I open up any AUDIO/DISC related program, my CD drive makes a clunking noise, and checks to see if a disc is in there. The little CD symbol next to my mouse shows up, and then it stops.This happens EVERY time i open winamp, and every time i open itunes.Whats worse about itunes, is it checks the CD drive every 3-4 minutes while itunes is open. Its VERY annoying because when it does this, it freezes iTunes for a second or two.
It also does the disc-check, every time I wake up from sleep mode.Ive had to stop using itunes complletely because of this.oh yea, and my DISC DRIVE IS EMPTY. There is NO disc in the drive ANY time this happens.
So, I have a i7 2600K system with a solid state disk as the boot drive, and an older (c2008) Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB drive as the data drive for programs (that I deem as not worthy of the quick load times). The hard drive has given me some errors over time, and I bought a hard disk to replace it (a Hitachi 1TB). The issue I'm having is that the fact that Windows 7 puts a small (100MB) partition on the F3, and for some reason, even though I'm running Acronis 2012, it doesn't seem to be able to clone the F3 over to the Hitachi. I've also tried Drive XML, and for my 2 hour wait, I only managed to acquire a boot error. Thankfully, I've not done anything rash to destroy the data on the F3, but given the fact that I've seen corrupted files in Steam from that drive, I'm not will to trust it long term with my data. I really need to get the data onto that Hitachi, though... Anyone have any advice for upgrading the HDD in a SSD/HDD system? I don't really feel like it should be so hard, especially if I've bought Acronis True Image, but maybe they haven't designed their product to handle this scenario quite yet?
Ok so here's a little backstory before I jump into my problem. I've got 2 harddrives installed; a SSD and a regular HDD. The SSD is labeled C: since it has Windows and other core programs while the HDD is labeled B:. The solid state is almost full while the regular one still has over a terabyte of space left to fill up. Normally, I have no problem installing new programs or games to the HDD till now.When I went to install my new game on B: it kept giving me invalid directory errors. So I went to the game's forums and discovered that the reason that issue was happening was because the game recognized drive letters A and B as floppy drives as opposed to hard drive letters. Further investigation revealed that apparently this little bit of design is hardcoded into the game and there really isn't any work around except changing the drive letter. So I looked up how to do so and made the change.....then the problems started.After changing the drive letter from B: to Z: I kept getting 'path does not exist' error message with features and hardware connected to Windows on C:.
For example, my DVD-ROM drive is labeled D: and everytime I tried to install the game after the drive letter change I got 'D:\, path does not exist. make sure the path is correct and try again' error. Another example, when trying to go to Device Manager to start a fix I couldn't because of 'explorer.exe, path does not exist' error. Basically, every step I tried where anything was connected to C: or D: I got the 'path does not exist' error. At this point I've done a system restore to before the drive letter changed and I'm running as I was before trying to install the game.My question is, how do I change the driver letter of my HDD without getting all the 'path does not exist' errors? If that's not possible, how do I fix the 'path does not exist errors' when the path starts with C: or D:? Is it done the same way I would with a program through the properties tab in the target path section and start in section? Or is there something more invasive I need to do when the path issue starts with C: and D:
I have a HP Touchsmart IQ500. Turning my computer PC on today, all I got was a blue HP invent screen with setup, boot menu, system recovery, and system diagnosis, and I could not get past it. I entered the BIOS and figured out that the hard drive was listed as "not installed." Pretty sure that is the main problem.I tried a system restore (with the Windows 7 install disc), but I guess the computer couldn't read the hard drive enough to enter safe mode (I tried restarting and F8ing several times). I put in an external hard drive, and the BIOS read it; however, windows does not allow you to partition an OS on a hard drive.
I have an internal hard disk not in use ,and I would like to make it as external disk !I looked on the net and I found I should have the " encelsure " butt I think I wont find it here in my city .So is there another way ? like usb -esata cable
Me and my brother built me a new computer from scratch (he did the building - i did the watching). I purchased an internal hard drive from Overclockers UK. It's a Samsung 1TB drive. I also have a 64 Solid-state drive in there as my primary hard drive that Windows was installed on and a couple of programs are installed on. My storage disk (the 1TB disk) is for all my music/films etc. Whenever I drag and drop a file into the Samsung hard-drive - it copies it rather than moves it instantly.When I had a laptop, I had 3 external hard drives and this is the way it copied files onto them.how I can get the internal drive to stop acting like an external drive?
I have a virus infected sata hard drive with windows 7 on it. It has the win 7 anti virus 2012 on it, and it's a cybercriminal virus. I have lots of files I want to transfer to the new sata drive. I already have windows 7 installed on the new drive. How do I get the files from the bad drive to the new one?
