Hard Drive activity light constantly blinking - new WIN7 Ultimate Dell PC

Anonymous
2009-12-05T23:05:42+00:00

I've been troubleshooting this problem off and on for weeks on my brand new WIN-7 64 Ultimate Dell XPS 8000 (I7-860 1TB HD 8GB Ram).    Searching around has found many recommendations and a couple of resolved issues, (more non-resolved), but none of the recommendations has helped me.  

I got a feeling that this may be a Dell-specific issue, but I got no response in the Dell forums.   I'm sure if I call Dell support, all I will get is recommendation to put it back to factory default.  no thanks! 

I have disabled all the suspects, at least temporarily to see if it has an affect:

Windows Indexing & Search

Windows Firewall

Windows Defender

System Restore

Remote Differential Compression

Windows Fax & Scan

Superfetch

Seaport

With all these off, the blinking was clearly less busy, but there was still a steady heartbeat type of blink.   I since re-enabled Defender and System Restore.    (Even if they were to blame, that is hardly an acceptable solution/workaround!!!)

I've studied disk activity in PERFMON and there is some occasional kernel activity and event logging.  I took a couple of window snapshots I can post (if I can figure how).   I also created HijackThis log.  

Sometimes the disk activity PERFMON window is blank but yet the light continues to blink!!!  huh???

I have not disabled hibernate (there was a suggestion somewhere it could be involved).  I use it regularly.   But I can try that too you think it might help.

I am at my wits end and a little overwhelmed at all the data to study and search for.  I hate diddling with services and the registry, fearful of getting in over my head and creating a mess I can't get out of.  

Also, there is no additional security software and I did not install any preinstalled trial crapola.

Help!!!!!!!!

I will post the hijack this log in the next post

  Update to clarify:  What I reported above is basically about out-of-the-box behavior... not application or CPU-bound related. The system was pretty clean with minimal extra software/hardware installed.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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Anonymous
2012-09-23T00:01:56+00:00

Hard drive light blinks quckly because Microsoft does what is called something like  Write Cache Flushing ... flushes disk drive writes that might be in that cache to disk?  Simple.

The reason is .. if you have a power failure.. you will lose some data from that cache and/or corrupt something that may be important.   Takes a hit on drive performance and life expectancy too.  So some of the experts say.

If you have a battery backup.. or most laptops with a battery can.. Disable it!

.. In device manager the hard drive properties usually has a check box for enable write caching ..  and some will have another check box...  Disable Microsoft Write Cache Flushing.    <  add a check to that guys box...now look at your non very often blinking Hdd light... works  same with some of the DVD/CD drives, same controllers probably. .

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-02-28T08:12:06+00:00

    I have the same symptoms of periodic solid disk activity and no response. This clears after 20 secs. Being a dedicated mediacenter PC "no signal" also appears - while watchin DVB-T TV. ASUS H55, WD1500 disk and freaked as-well. Still trying to get a handle on it - latest drivers, AHCI mode and unneccessary services stopped.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-02-17T08:53:01+00:00

    By any chance do you all use western digital hdd?or a h55 chipset mobo?im having same prob n i want to b sure about that fault.its freakin me out.glowing light and slowest pc

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-01-20T16:45:03+00:00

    I don't think that reformatting and reinstalling Windows fixes anything like this for very long. 

    Windows Vista and later is installed by laying down an image on NTFS (not by file copying on FAT as in the old days).  Since it is installed by laying down an image you can reinstall Windows a hundred times and not get anything significantly different.  Almost always the real cause of perf problems comes back because the same software, devices, drivers, and maintenance habits lead to the same issues.

    Reloading Windows to restore performance worked in the days of Win9x/ME but is pretty much urban legend now.  That is not to say you can't correct problems caused by file corruptions, errors, and such that way but using other tools like system file checker is less drastic.  Obviously isolated cases are always going to be different, but as a general rule, reloading modern Windows is not an effective routine maintenance tool like it was ten years ago.

    I realize I'm just spouting off here, but there is a difference between twenty years of experience and the same year of experience twenty times.  I try not keep fixing Win 95.  :)

    Colin Barnhorst

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-01-20T16:15:53+00:00

    The problem is simply that even Windows 7 just doesn't cut it. When I had this problem (on 3 different computers,) my only solution was to simply reformat: Like how you fix every other Windows problem from previous versions to now.

    Now my system isn't top of the line, but it is close. When I see the hard drive activity light constantly on, I know it is not supposed to do that, especially when computer is idling. Nothing should be loading in the back in a way where the HD is being used constantly throughout the computers entire time on. Anyway, aside from that, Windows is just really the problem. I never fixed my problem, in fact, it got worse, and my PC was freezing all over the place, and all my hardware was checked with every test possible. Had to reinstall, even bought a new HD, hoping that stupid ____ doesn't happen again.

    After all these years, Microsoft still can't make an efficient Windows version that eliminates things like the need to run msconfig, services.msc, CMD commands ETC, it is still a buggy mess with insanely slow startups, even on high end rigs and still requires the most help of any OS.

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