Ways to tell what process is accessing a file?

[Will]

I don't know anything really, but I have a similar setup. I have 3 hard drives--two (one is USB and the other internal--3TB between them) have all of our movie DVDs ripped onto them (we use a projector--no TV) and the third (smaller) has two partitions--operating system and Gateway's recovery partition. We don't get anything spooling up unnaturally.

I have Windows XP on this and Avast free home virus protection, and Spybot. I also run CC Cleaner pretty regularly and let it do what it wants.

The last time I had a computer that kept spooling up the drive it was way, way out of date. I think I had a K6-2 with 256K of memory and every time I touched a key the hard drive would explode into action. Maybe you are getting close to needing a memory upgrade and even though it isn't using the drive for page filing, it's starting it up.

I would get rid of Norton or McAfee if you have it and use Avast, plus keep Spybot on it. And run CC Cleaner.

 

[4x4junkie]

Funny you should say that... I never once had this issue with the 2nd drive spinning up for no reason on my old Windows ME machine that ran Norton AV on a K62 processor... I think I had a whopping 192 megs of RAM on it too lol.

Right now I have 2 gigs of RAM, and already ditched Symantec's AV for Avast some months ago. Getting rid of Symantec has lessened the frequency of the spoolups (mostly those that just happen randomly on their own for no reason), but still half the time right after I open a .TXT or .JPG file on the Desktop the damn thing spools up. F'in' stupid.
I have Spybot, but not CCleaner... I have Reg Cure I run from time to time which looks like it's the same type of deal...

Can Norton's uneraser and disk defragmenter cause something like this? I had installed an older version of Systemworks awhile back, but I uninstalled everything (including the antivirus) except for a few utilities like Windoctor, Speed Disk, and Unerase (which don't run in the background). With Reg Cure I don't need WinDoc (and Windows has it's own defragmenter), but once in awhile I've still had need to use the Unerase. If I got rid of those completely, I'd want to replace the Unerase with something.


Sometimes I just wish I could go back to the old days when things were simpler, but none of the f'in' softwares (Firefox, my Canon camera/printer, etc.) are supported on 98/ME anymore (which is what forced me over to this XP box a bit over 3 years ago).

 

[black_sheep]

Hey I'm all for going back to DOS most days, nothing simpler than that! Plus I had some kickass games that were DOS only (Space/Kings Quest anybody remember?) that even programs like DOSBox have a hard time making work. 7 seems to be a step up, but it can be no fun too (please, please let me set something up w/out a wizard or doing it for me!)

My guess if its not any of the stuff we've tried is it's one of those fun Windows 'quirks' where it feels like it needs the drive to be ready "just in case" like a quickstart thing, that's why you see it access that second drive in ProcMon but it really doesn't do anything, especially if it isn't hitting a program folder. Short of reinstalling Windows and installing programs one by one until you find one that does it it's really hard to pin down what's got files on that drive (Reg Cure/CCleaner should help with that).

I'd blame it on Norton out of hand, but that's only cuz I hate it with a passion. I have Spybot and Avira on all my machines, but don't have 2 drives on anything so can't really test...

 

[4x4junkie]

DOS is a loooonnng way back lol (way before I got into it).
Win 98 was out when the computer bug finally nailed me, and then I moved over to ME when it came out. I used that ME box (upgraded with an AMD Athlon mobo in '03) all the way up until toward the end of '08 when frustration with incompatible software got to be too much and I had to shell out for a newer system.
XP is almost creepy... I can't even imagine what Vista and 7 are like (like you said, too many stupid f'ing "wizards", all the dire pop up warnings that tell me my system is "at risk" if I don't do blah blah blah, and then of course this phantom drive accessing issue).


Got a recommendation for an Unerase replacement? (recovers files deleted by accident)?
If so, I'll s#!tcan what little is left of Norton and see if that helps.

 

[black_sheep]

Sheesh now I feel old (I'm 26). But nothing like playing Half-Life when it came out on a AMD 350 with 128MB of RAM and waiting 30sec between load screens. That's hardcore...

I've actually gotten into the habit of running the server versions of Windows (except 7 on my laptop). It's kinda like 7 without the bloat, though you get the wizards and stuff still. The learning curve can be steep though, like finding a antivirus you can get to work. But still nice once you get it working.

See if any of these sound right -> clicky . I'm not real sure exactly what unerase does exactly so not sure if any will work.

I talked to a coworker about it, and he said he had the same problem on his machine and couldn't ever figure it out, or take the time to (more likely).

 

[4x4junkie]

Yeah Unerase undeletes stuff (provided it hasn't already been overwritten of course lol).

I'll check those out. Thanks.