Vista - What is it doing during idle?

I have noticed that my hard drive is busy doing something even while the computer is idle. I can't figure out what it is. I have turned off indexing, Windows Defender, and my system doesn't come with shadowing. (Windows Home Premium). I don't have any visible background programs running, (no antivirus programs, etc). The system restore is scheduled to happen daily, not all day long every day. Screen savers are turned off. Powering down is turned off. The computer is not connected to the internet.

So what the heck is the computer doing when it's left idle? Why is it still grinding away computing something?

Could be the automatic defragger that kicks in.

It could be any number of things, look in your error logs.
List your system specs.
Look in msconfig, this will tell you what programs are loading during startup. This will give you a clue as to what is running.

In the task manager click on the performance tab then the resource monitor, it will tell you what the hard drive is doing.

MrHope,

In addition to the other posts, it can be the Search Index running in the background updating the index. It will usually calm down after awhile. You can test this by disabling it, and enable it again later if you want.

Index - Enable or Disable

Shawn