At random intervals, the hard drive on my computer bursts into activity, and grinds away for 30 seconds or more, even when the computer is not running an application. I am using Windows XP. Is this normal, or should I suspect some problem? Ken Joy
I'd expect an unattended PC to remain inactive or hibernate. Windows XP now does some auto-defragmenting of the hard drive to optimise the startup, but I'd guess this would take more than 30 seconds and not happen often.
Go to the Control Panel and look under Scheduled Tasks to see if there are any -- eg virus scanning. If you can't find anything, run Silent Runners (http://www.silentrunners.org). This creates a text file of all the programs running on your PC. Do a few web searches to see if you can find a program that shouldn't be there -- but don't delete anything unless you are really sure it's malware.
