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
    2011-01-20T05:16:10+00:00

    Hershey444: "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."

    With 8GB of ram how are you using hibernate?  Generally it disables with that amount of ram due to performance issues. 

    Hard drive activity has been a frequent concern since Vista beta days.  There is many many times more stuff going on in Vista and Win 7 than there ever was in XP and 2000.  I have watched my frequently blinking hard drive activity light since 2006 but it has not been much of a concern for me because it hasn't seemed to affect performance. 

    I have 8GB of ram also.  I can barely imagine how much swapping there must be for someone running Vista/Win 7 with just one or two gigs. 

    In the beta days we testers were told that the OS had not yet been optimized.  Then we were told that it takes a new system a few days to settle down (indexing, etc.)  Over time other explanations have been offered.  Now it is clear to me that modern Windows is simply inherently far busier than previous OS's.  The burning question is, How much busier is it and is that acceptible?  Each user has to answer that for himself.

    Colin Barnhorst

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-01-20T05:14:16+00:00

    Hershey444,on the front of your computer, you have 1 Power On button, 1 Reset button,right?

    And 2 LED lights.

    One is for the Power, to tell you that 'YES'...you are getting Power.

    And, the other one, well, it IS the 'blinking' one, right?

    It sure is annoying, ain't it!

    Funny thing is, that is what it is supposed to be doing.

    That's right, it is doing it's job, too,

    Just like the 'Power' one.

    It's telling you that your computer is actively 'reading'.......it's hard-drive, giving you all the information you need to run it!

    Which is 'why' it always seems to be 'blinking'!

    Guess what?

    There you are, ripping your computer apart.

    For no reason, at all, other than that you 'think' ..........it is a problem.

    It is not,but, you are.

    To your computer.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-01-20T03:13:26+00:00

    On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 01:58:20 +0000, redcanoe22 wrote:

    I have a 2002 Toshiba laptop with Windows XP of course. But I had noticed busy hard disc when in screen saver for some time. It

    Please ask in the correct forum. Not only is your message off-topic

    here in a Windows 7 forum, but if you ask in the right place, a

    Windows XP forum, you will have a much better chance of getting the

    answer you need, since that's where the experts in your technology

    hang out.

    Ken Blake (MS MVP)

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-01-20T01:58:20+00:00

    I have a 2002 Toshiba laptop with Windows XP of course. But I had noticed busy hard disc when in screen saver for some time. It suddenly became much worse after my weekly tune-up & disc check. It now had become like this any time computer is idle. I listen to ESPN Radio when I go to bed and it would freeze up after 30 minutes. It's funny the way it would limber up when I try to use it and then start "motoring" again when idle with the flashing hard disc light and typing and cooling fan blowing.  Nothing on the Task Manager told me anything.  The processes tab always showed only system idle processes being busy with anything.  I have Internet Explorer & Firefox and it was about the same with both except that Firefox was constantly displaying "Unresponsive Script" dialog boxes.  And it would start up motoring even when the browser was closed.  You couldn't leave it idle.  In spite of that, I tried the solution below for "Internet Explorer and it worked completely for both browsers and when everything is closed and idle, too. 

    I went to the addresses below and was shocked that this fixed the problem to where it is now looks like it may be as good as when new.

    Microsoft Fix it Center Automated Solutions

    Select: Internet Explorer

    Select: Improve performance, safety and security in Internet Explorer  http://support.microsoft.com/mats/ie\_performance\_and\_safety/

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