Vista Tutorial - What's all this disk activity?

My Lenovo 3000 laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Whenever I start
it up and log on, the hard drive is active for five minutes or more after all
of the startup applications have initialized. The performance monitor shows
a huge number of reads and writes being done by the kernel. I've tried
turning off every feature I can think of, but nothing has any effect. What
is happening?

From some of the other posts I've found, I am getting the idea that System
Protection is making a Recovery Point every time I turn on the computer. I
thought I turned off Recovery Points completely, so I am still mystified.


"JediDog" wrote:

> My Lenovo 3000 laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Whenever I start
> it up and log on, the hard drive is active for five minutes or more after all
> of the startup applications have initialized. The performance monitor shows
> a huge number of reads and writes being done by the kernel. I've tried
> turning off every feature I can think of, but nothing has any effect. What
> is happening?

On 12-Mar-2007, =?Utf-8?B?SmVkaURvZw==?= <JediDog@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:

> My Lenovo 3000 laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Whenever I
> start
> it up and log on, the hard drive is active for five minutes or more after
> all
> of the startup applications have initialized. The performance monitor
> shows
> a huge number of reads and writes being done by the kernel. I've tried
> turning off every feature I can think of, but nothing has any effect.
> What
> is happening?

Superfetch is at work loading programs into memory for faster access. Look
at as a cache.

I think that Superfetch is part of what I'm seeing. So is Registry Backup.
And I've seen a bunch of writes to System Volume Information, so I may have
also seen an Automatic Restore Point creation.

Can I turn Superfetch off?


"Gary" wrote:

>
> On 12-Mar-2007, =?Utf-8?B?SmVkaURvZw==?= <JediDog@discussions.microsoft.com>
> wrote:
>
> > My Lenovo 3000 laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Whenever I
> > start
> > it up and log on, the hard drive is active for five minutes or more after
> > all
> > of the startup applications have initialized. The performance monitor
> > shows
> > a huge number of reads and writes being done by the kernel. I've tried
> > turning off every feature I can think of, but nothing has any effect.
> > What
> > is happening?
>
> Superfetch is at work loading programs into memory for faster access. Look
> at as a cache.
>

> Can I turn Superfetch off?

Why on earth? What's wrong with it accessing the disk in the background?
Why does it bother you? It's just doing its Vista thing. There is no need
at all to mess with it - you'll probably slow it down.

Relax, and trust me: all is well.

Thack

I've seen this issue also. For about 5 or so minutes after startup, there
is a lot of disk activity. In Task Manager, it is "NT Kernel & System"
that's using the resources. Whatever it's doing, it's not doing it "in the
background" because while it's working it's significantly slowing down
anything else I do on the computer.

"Steve Thackery" <thack@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:OjuPBsMZHHA.1244@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>> Can I turn Superfetch off?
>
> Why on earth? What's wrong with it accessing the disk in the background?
> Why does it bother you? It's just doing its Vista thing. There is no
> need at all to mess with it - you'll probably slow it down.
>
> Relax, and trust me: all is well.
>
> Thack
>

Thanks Tim! I have been spending a lot of time waiting for the computer and
I'd like to know what it's doing. If I could turn off Superfetch, I could
see what activity remains.

I have 1GB of DRAM. Is that enough?


"Tim" wrote:

> I've seen this issue also. For about 5 or so minutes after startup, there
> is a lot of disk activity. In Task Manager, it is "NT Kernel & System"
> that's using the resources. Whatever it's doing, it's not doing it "in the
> background" because while it's working it's significantly slowing down
> anything else I do on the computer.
>
> "Steve Thackery" <thack@nowhere.net> wrote in message
> news:OjuPBsMZHHA.1244@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> >> Can I turn Superfetch off?
> >
> > Why on earth? What's wrong with it accessing the disk in the background?
> > Why does it bother you? It's just doing its Vista thing. There is no
> > need at all to mess with it - you'll probably slow it down.
> >
> > Relax, and trust me: all is well.
> >
> > Thack
> >
>
>

"JediDog" <JediDog@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C855F52F-F5EB-4ABF-B71A-6C545015FEC3@microsoft.com...
> My Lenovo 3000 laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Whenever I
> start
> it up and log on, the hard drive is active for five minutes or more after
> all
> of the startup applications have initialized. The performance monitor
> shows
> a huge number of reads and writes being done by the kernel. I've tried
> turning off every feature I can think of, but nothing has any effect.
> What
> is happening?

It's probably SearchIndex, I predict it will stop in a few days once all
your stored data is indexed.

I have already tried clearing the indexing attribute for C: and
subdirectories. It didn't make any discernable difference.


"Lee" wrote:

>
> "JediDog" <JediDog@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:C855F52F-F5EB-4ABF-B71A-6C545015FEC3@microsoft.com...
> > My Lenovo 3000 laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Whenever I
> > start
> > it up and log on, the hard drive is active for five minutes or more after
> > all
> > of the startup applications have initialized. The performance monitor
> > shows
> > a huge number of reads and writes being done by the kernel. I've tried
> > turning off every feature I can think of, but nothing has any effect.
> > What
> > is happening?
>
> It's probably SearchIndex, I predict it will stop in a few days once all
> your stored data is indexed.
>
>

"JediDog" <JediDog@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2F3295FE-75CE-4080-80C5-E443D2B65620@microsoft.com...
>I have already tried clearing the indexing attribute for C: and
> subdirectories. It didn't make any discernable difference.

Use Process Monitor to see what is happening
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...ssmonitor.mspx

Lee

>
>
> "Lee" wrote:
>
>>
>> "JediDog" <JediDog@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:C855F52F-F5EB-4ABF-B71A-6C545015FEC3@microsoft.com...
>> > My Lenovo 3000 laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Whenever I
>> > start
>> > it up and log on, the hard drive is active for five minutes or more
>> > after
>> > all
>> > of the startup applications have initialized. The performance monitor
>> > shows
>> > a huge number of reads and writes being done by the kernel. I've tried
>> > turning off every feature I can think of, but nothing has any effect.
>> > What
>> > is happening?
>>
>> It's probably SearchIndex, I predict it will stop in a few days once all
>> your stored data is indexed.
>>
>>