Another computer question.....

[Quest4Less]

Every now and then my cpu/hard drive starts whiring and grinding away as if it is accessing something even though I am not using the computer at the time. Is this normal?

I have Norton running and there is no indication of any virus from the scans.......

 

[Jacques_Offe]

Computers make lots funny sounds. It may be accessing the internet if you are on broadband or it may be preparing to fire up the screensaver. I am sure there are more coputer savy guys who can give you a better answer.

C ya

 

[Jacques_Offe]

Probably guys who can spell too!

 

[g8keepr]

this is a normal occurance....similar to some cars today that even though it is not turned on it sounds like the fan is running....it is just the pc's way of cooling down (sometimes) other times it is just defragmenting files or re-arranging web files....i would only worry if the sound gets louder...if this becomes the case then it means your hd is failing...........hope this helps

 

[Average Joe]

g8keepr is absolutely right. It's probably just your PC doing a little housekeeping. It usually waits to do this when nothing is going on so it doesn't interfere with anything you might be doing.

 

[Quest4Less]

Thanks...

Appreciate the help, takes one worry off the plate.

Thanks everyone...

 

[B_roo]

Activity

Activity can be caused by a lot of things, sometimes simultaneously. Yes - your computer could be doing housekeeping and yes - you could be being hacked - and IMO most likely (if you surf a lot) you may have spyware busy collecting ans sending data. Best 2 products I can think of to protect yourself (besides a resident, up-to-date anti-virus) are Zonealarm and AdAware.
ZoneAlarm is a firewall that's a breeze to setup and protects you both ways. Most firewalls block incoming hacks but don't protect you from spyware you may have downloaded quite innocently. Zonealarm monitors both incoming and outgoing traffic and if something is trying to access the internet it'll let you know and give you the choice to stop or allow it. It also remembers (if you choose) your answer so it won't bug you again.
AdAware is the best spyware hunter on the market and will find files directories and registry entries belonging to spyware and let you remove them. Some common spyware that everybody gets at least once are Comet Cursor (the worst ) and Gator. Both ZoneAlarm and AdAware are free for download should be on every Windows PC. IMHO.

 

[YorkNorthGuy]

This is a normal occurance on computer operating systems that use disk for extended memory management. When you use your system, you have finite amount of physical memory (RAM). Let's say you have 128mb of RAM. As you open files and start various applications, the system needs more memory to perform those functions. The OS will determine what chunks of physical RAM are not being used and will "swap" it out to disk. Basically it takes the contents of that memory and writes it out to a disk file. It then will use the physical memory for whatever it needed it for. If the system finds that the application that was "swapped" is required again in memory, it will reverse the process by writing out what is in memory to disk, read from disk what was swapped before and then put it back in memory.

So, why is this going on after a period of inactivity? When the OS determines that chunks of swapped memory are no longer required, it starts to clean up the swap file by reading what is in there and making the swap file smaller. There is a confiluted algorhythm that the OS will use to determine what disk contents are eligable to be flushed.

Windows also does "stuff" (other clean up routines) when the system is unused and will take disk and CPU cylcles to do that. Also, check your scheduler - you may have the system update notification routine running (by default it is every 5 minutes). Some screen savers are also disk users - especially when they first start up.

"But I have found out from other expert sources that Rogers automatically detects when your PC is idle and they let other people use your modem until they detect activity."

There would be no reason for Rogers to do that. Your modem is for your use to the internet cloud. Other people can not use your modem for anything other than to gain access to your system.

If you leave your machine on all of the time with broadband though I would make sure that you have some firewall in place. You would be surprised what kind of things are going on out there.