This one has me stumped - amongst my menagerie of hacked-together Windows 98SE units is the following unit with a curious problem - the hard drive is constantly writing without pause.

Now, that in itself may not be so curious as the fact that there is nothing in this unit that would cause such actions.

For instance, I recently installed a clean Windows 98SE installation onto it less then a month ago, and there is not a stick of spyware or adware on it - and of course, no viruses. Yet, the constant-write problem has been there since the day I re-installed '98SE.

Neither are there any unknown running applications either - TaskInfo shows the processor at running 93-95% free - the largest two programs consuming the other few percentages of the processor use is Firefox and TaskInfo itself.

The main specs of the machine are as follows:

*Intel D815EEA board
*Two 128mb/PC100 SDRAM cards (the board refuses to detect a 128 placed in the third bank, for whatever reason)
*Pentium III 733mhz processor (previous to this, a 466 Celeron and a 366 Celeron, of which this write problem existed as well).
*350w Enermax PSU
*A Fujitsu (if I recall right) 12gb harddrive

Could anyone shed some light onto this? It isn't that terrible to live with, but I can feel a slight latency at times which I believe is a side-effect of this problem.

Take care,

-Kurt

explain the terminology of 'write'
is the drive actually writing and adding bytes to the drive?? is the drive filling up??
maybe its the drive 'seeking', looking for something it cant find.
put a floppy in and the win98 disk in the rom, see if it still chatters.
a longshot of course

Sometimes cache ram can be disabled in cmos/bios setup. Make sure it's enabled.

Remove one of the ram sticks and see if you still have the same problem.

Might just be a problem with the drive.

mountain: 'Seeking' would be a good term for it, yes. It does not seem to be physically writing to the drive (although it gives off the same sound as if one were writing to it).

Dave: Checked the BIOS - no such setting, and no other settings that could be related to this problem.

I tried the ram trick with only a single 128mb 100mhz SDRAM, and a 128mb 133mhz SDRAM, no help.

One thing though - upon listening closer, it doesn't seem to be the hard drive making the sound, but the processor (and not a fault of the fan either). Regardless, if one turns on the animated cursor option, one gets a pointer with a constantly spinning hourglass next to it.

-Kurt

Excuse me - made a mistake. I tested it with a single 133mhz SODMM, and one 133mhz DIMM. All banks work fine in various configurations.

-Kurt

You wouldn't, by chance, have installed Office95/97 on there have you?

http://www.geek.com/tipstrix/misc/f...

Just checking...

Does it do the same thing if you boot to safe mode command prompt?

T-R-A: Nope, although I intend to install it soon. I'm aware of the Findfast bug - it is the first thing I look for in these cases, but as it doesn't have Office on it, I ruled it out. If that were the case, it would have shown up on the Task Manager.

worky: I'll try Safe Mode and report back.

-Kurt

I'd think that much hard drive activity on a fresh install would be due to low ram that causes excessive swap file usage. You've got 256 meg installed but what actually shows under 'system properties' (right click on 'my computer', then 'properties')?

Run msconfig and click 'adavanced'. Is the 'limit memory to' box checked?

Using msconfig, also look in the system.ini file under the [vcache] section. There's probably nothing showing there. But if so uncheck the vcache box so it's temporarily disabled and see if that makes a difference.

Boot in DOS. That will tell you if it's winders or hardware.

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

DAVEINCAPS: 256 in System Properties and the BIOS. I'll check MSCONFIG/limit memory as well.

Incidentally, I booted up in Safe Mode, and the problem seemed to disappear. Clue?

One other thing - just to see if it would become overly taxed, I ran a flight simulator (Fly2K) on it for an hour or so (have to waste times between Computing.net posts, eh?), and I was quite pleased at the performance - high frame rates with no problems.

Take care,

-Kurt

Check the [vcache] as I mentioned. Also from 'system properties' choose 'performance', then click 'virtual memory'. It should be set to 'Let Windows Manage. . .'

Did you install the chipset drivers for that motherboard?

Office 97 is on the way.

Dave:

>Run msconfig and click 'adavanced'. Is the 'limit memory to' box checked?

Nope.

>Check the [vcache] as I mentioned.

Nothing in the vcache folder. No effect when it is disabled.

>'system properties' choose 'performance', then click 'virtual memory'. It should be set to 'Let Windows Manage. . .'

It is set to "Let Windows Manage..."

>Did you install the chipset drivers for that motherboard?

The chipset drivers for the Intel mobo were installed immediately after the installation of Windows.

Is there a possibility that this is a bad drive that is trying to recover lost data? I've had one (only one) instance when the screen went black when I pressed the cancel button at the Windows Login screen whilst starting up.

Take care,

-Kurt

Add this line to the [386Enh] of system.ini:

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

You can run SYSEDIT to add it. That should minimize swapfile usage, if that is the problem.

Maybe there is a problem with the drive. But it seems like it'd be there in safe mode too.

Um, you mentioned in #3 it didn't seem to be coming from the hard drive. It doesn't seem like it could be anything else, since you get the hourglass 'busy signal' and you've ruled out the cooling fan. But if it is the hard drive its activity LED on the front panel should be flashing also.

Added that line to the System.ini - still doing it. I assume it is fine to add the line in Wordpad? Have done so before without a problem.

Well, I've been listening hard in the case, and I'm suspecting that the bearings on the HD fan is where the actual noise itself is originating from (I'm going to oil it now), although it sounds dead-on to a HD write/read sound. Phooey on me for building them inside resonating steel server boxes.

Regardless though, it can't be denied that the hourglass still runs - not the large hourglass, but the small one with the pointer a.k.a. "Working In Background" according to M$ settings.

Take care,

-Kurt

P.S.: I found this a bit odd - "Disable Fast Shutdown" (msconfig > advanced) was checked, but if one un-checks it, the "Shut Down" feature operates as would "Restart."

Checking "Disable Fast Boot" results in normal shutdown, although this machine does take a noticeable 20 seconds longer to shut down then my other fresh-install 98SE units.

-Kurt

The hard drive won't have a cooling fan unless you've added one. If you think it might be a fan you can disconnect it and see if the problem persists.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to remember a similar hard drive problem with a specific chipset. That's why I wondered if you'd installed the chipset drivers. Maybe I was wrong or maybe it was installing the drivers that caused the problem.

HD fan...chalk up another brain fart at my end - I meant to say processor fan. It's better, but the old PSU fan doesn't help.

Well, I'll do a Google search - maybe bug Intel so they can tell me that even though they might have reports relating to this specific problem with this mobo, they can't disclose it to me because the board is discontinued... (rolls eyes)

Take care,

-Kurt

You may be trying too many things at once here. I would boot to 'safe mode command prompt' and verify that the problem does not happen. On the the same F8 menu is a 'Step-by-step confirmation' choice. Maybe you could use this to help you single out what is going wrong.

worky: Forgive me for asking what might sound like a stupid question, but what would you suggest I enable/disable when using that particular boot setup?

-Kurt

Well, I'm pleased to say I located and fixed the problem, and I'm not so pleased to say that I feel akin to a fool. Like most all of these seemingly incurable problems, the solution was simple to the point of stupidity.

First though, a word about the processor write/read noise - the sound turned out to be a combination of a bad PSU fan, and a slight ticking from the heatsink fan. Both problems were quickly rectified.

As for the cursor, it appears as if the standard arrow cursor icon for idle use had been - somehow - replaced with that of the icon for "Working In Background." I hit the button to restore the icon defaults, and the problem disappeared.

Beats me to hell how the icon got changed in the first place - I never did touch the icons. For that matter, if I recall right, it had been set like this since I installed Win 98 on that unit about 4 months ago. Go figure.

Take care,

-Kurt

Thanks for posting back. We're glad you got it fixed.