HD running in background - worries me

[cauzomb]

After reading through all this again you really have not given us much info....
How are you connected to the internet? Does this happen whether you are online or not? What firewall do you use? What anti-virus program do you use? What other security programs are running all the time?

I for one, would like to see a brand new HJT log...not the one you said you parsed, which by the way, if you used the analyzer here isn't worth anything. It has not been updated since our crash a year ago and analyzing your own HJT log is not recommended anyway.

Uh, oh! I'm not gonna step on toes here; I do agree that you could post a HJT log, but keep it separate from the drive activity/slow PC worries question and title it something like;
HELP: HJT log.

But atleast disable indexing service and see if that stops the random activity.

It sounds like your PC is OK. Windows xp has some memory leaks, and most 3rd party applications aren't programmed to clean up after themselfs; registry settings/ terminate stay resident "in memory" dll's and extra fonts and such fill up the "base" or page area of memory that is normally reserved for applications, even if you have xp and global mem, it's still a problem that creeps up over time... You wind up with memory stuffed full; which degrades the system performance, compared to how it used to respond, when it was freshly installed.

There are some applications to "tune" the memory usage, and "dll" unloaders but are geared towards advanced users.

The best way to keep resources free for applications is avoid loading unecesarry applications; if you don't make 10 post cards a week, don't get clipart programs etc.. Really step back and look at what you DON'T do very often with your machine, then decide on what you DON'T need. Re-installing windows on a clean drive is another way to start fresh and be selective from there; and be picky about what gets loaded at startup.

[jholland1964]

Ok, you aren't stepping on toes, honest. Just wanted the HJT log just as a simple way to see what unnecessary programs and services show as running on Start and in the background. Especially since said he had all ready run it once but we never saw any logs. Don't start a new thread, didn't feel you were dealing with malware, just wanted the quick snapshot to give us a better idea. But that is ok you don't need to do post a log just disable the items you don't use all the time and check this link Here to see how and what services you don't need.