On my new Athlon XP 1500+ system, with 40GB hard disk and Windows Me, tha hard disk light is constantly on, but not just during the use of Windows - it is on from the moment the power button is pressed, and goes off when the system is powered down. I'm new to these more modern machines, and I have no idea if it's common or what. Any ideas? Alex

no, it's not common. it should'nt be happening. sounds like someone plugged the hdd led to the wrong pins on the mobo, possibly the power pins.

But the power light is on also, and is functioning as the power led bcos it flashses in standby... thanks for the help

the power led was only a possability. there could be any number of reasons why the hdd led is on all the time. it should at least flicker occasionaly.

Guru's got the right idea. Open the case and find the bunch of little LED connectors coming from the front panel of the tower and connecting to a bunch of pins. One will be marked HD, take it off the pins and turn it around and put it back on ( this might make the light not work at all - so you can always change it back ) Also make sure that the two pins it is connected to are the right two - you will need your motherboard manual to look at the wiring diagram. The power LED is marked P+P-P- Everything should be labelled both on the pin connector on the board, and also on the little wires as well. It's only a LED panel activity wire and can't hurt anything on the computer, if you swap it around. Krystyna

Hello. I am having the same problem as Alex except I believe mine is a little stranger. I had NT 4.0 on a machine. The hard drive LED worked perfectly. I upgraded to Windows 2000. The hard drive LED now stays on permanently. When I reverted back to my old image of NT 4.0 just to make sure, the LED goes back to normal. Any ideas on this?

I have the same problem with my system. I have a triple-boot system with ME, 2000 server, and XP pro. Hard drive LED operates normally when I boot into ME or 2k (blinks when accessed, off when idle), but stays on solid the entire time I'm in XP even when I log off of my username. I did a search in MS Knowledge Base and found nothing. It's strange because it doesn't "sound" like it's reading the drive, although that doesn't mean much because scandisk doesn't make any "sounds" either. I just don't like the idea of my new 80GB drive being always on. Athlon 1.4 ghz Maxtor 80GB IDE XP pro corp edition (bootleg)