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.

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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
    2011-08-12T23:54:56+00:00

    I have a new laptop and am not a heavy user and this lockup happens all the time. It's beyond frusterating and I'm pinning it on windows unless they solve it. There are posts everywhere about this issue. Usually tied to NTFS master file table or NTFS Volumn log. I can watch it happen in research monitor. All disk activity stops until it's cleaned up Then the PC is back to normal.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-08-17T19:08:32+00:00

    Lighten up, all of you.

    It may be because that you have the Defrag program (of Win 7) running AUTOMATICALLY.....that light is always 'blinking'!

    Have you never ever considered that?

    Mine (the Defrag) is set to work automatically, and, yes, the computer does 'blink' a lot as a result.

    Want this 'blinking' to stop?

    Take the Defrag off.....AUTO!

    Simple enough to do.

    Or, just live with the 'blinking' now you know what is causing it!

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-08-19T01:34:15+00:00

    Aaaaiiieeeee, that was it. As soon as I unchecked the schedule task option and clicked OK, the blinking stopped. However, Microsoft doesn't seem to consider that at some point there is literally nothing left to defragment, and then STOP, until the next scheduled scan. I purposely left my drives static for quite a while, and the blinking just never stopped. Ever. Ever ever ever.

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-10-14T15:48:49+00:00

    On another forum I saw the solution that works for me (HP computer & Win7).  Go into device manager & disable your CD/DVD drive & the flashing stops.  Reenable the drive when you need to use it.

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