Continuous HDD Chatter

[arkham618]

Is it safe to assume that Avast! pretty much continuously accesses the hard drive while it operates? I ask because I've noticed punctuated HDD chatter on my brand new system (Intel Core2 Quad 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, Windows XP SP2), even when it should be idle. By that, I mean there is low-level seeking activity, which did not occur when I first got the system (about two weeks ago), that never seems to go away. I have defragmented my hard drive multiple times, shut off Windows indexing, and run AV and malware scans with a half dozen applications, all of which have come back clean. If there's an infection on my system, it's buried so deep that Avast!, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, AdAware, Spybot, and Uniblue can't find it. Avast! is the only AV actually resident on my machine (the other scans were run online), and I do not run any other security software in the background except PeerGuardian 2. So I figure the source of the chatter has to be Avast! I can think of no other explanation. Which leads me to the next question: Is it possible to tweak Avast! to stop the drive chatter? The rest of my system is virtually silent, and the constant noise of the HDD seeking is driving me crazy.

[igor]

Does avast! tray icon spin?
If not, there's no reason it should access the disk.

[Lisandro]

Windows XP SP2
PeerGuardian 2

I had problems with PG in Vista... seems it 'conflicts' with avast drivers.
Which is the Standard Shield sensibility? Normal or High?

[arkham618]

Does avast! tray icon spin?
If not, there's no reason it should access the disk.

Occasionally, but not always. But like I said, the chatter is punctuated, occurring in very short bursts, that repeat endlessly. How sensitive is the icon animation to this sort of activity? Still, if it's not avast!, and the system shows up clean on six different AV/malware scans, and the drive's 100% defragged, and there's no indexing going on in the background, what the heck could it be? I've been struggling with this problem for a couple of days now and have disabled multiple extraneous services, in case one of those was the cause, and still the chatter continues. Avast! is the only thing left that I can see causing this sort of problem.

[arkham618]

Windows XP SP2
PeerGuardian 2

I had problems with PG in Vista... seems it 'conflicts' with avast drivers.
Which is the Standard Shield sensibility? Normal or High?

My system runs XP, not Vista. (I won't touch Vista, personally.) I have all shields set to high. Turning off PG makes no difference.

[DavidR]

Having the Standard Shield set to high would increase scan activity (but what you have to find is what is responsible the activity), the default setting, Normal, provides the best balance between protection and performance.

Try this to try and identify what is being scanned, that may give an idea of the program responsible - Standard Shield - 'Show detailed info on performed actions' this option is off by default, so temporarily enable it.

[arkham618]

Having the Standard Shield set to high would increase scan activity (but what you have to find is what is responsible the activity), the default setting, Normal, provides the best balance between protection and performance.

Try this to try and identify what is being scanned, that may give an idea of the program responsible - Standard Shield - 'Show detailed info on performed actions' this option is off by default, so temporarily enable it.

Ooh, that's handy. Avast! seems to be scanning Firefox a lot (reading sessionstore.js), checks PeerGuardian's logfile every so often, and (strangely) scans itself from time to time. Occasionally, there's also a flurry of Windows system activity.

Reducing the Shield setting to Normal does seem to lessen the drive chatter. But it is still pretty frequent, though I think that might be because Firefox updates sessionrestore.js every time I type or click inside the browser.

[DavidR]

I don't know what your settings are within firefox, that would require the sessionstore.js to continually update. I don't see that kind of activity on my hdd when browsing with firefox and the standard shield on Normal sensitivity, you could always exclude the file from scans, Standard Shield, Customize, Advanced, Add type the path and file name to be excluded.

These are the settings I have for sessionstore in about:config, see image.

[dewild1]

google desktop index, ms index installed?
remove Avast, see if it still happends.
Whats in hklm,soft,microsoft,windows, cv, run?

[arkham618]

I don't know what your settings are within firefox, that would require the sessionstore.js to continually update. I don't see that kind of activity on my hdd when browsing with firefox and the standard shield on Normal sensitivity, you could always exclude the file from scans, Standard Shield, Customize, Advanced, Add type the path and file name to be excluded.

These are the settings I have for sessionstore in about:config, see image.

I've configured avast! to ignore sessionstore.js, but it has not improved the situation.

[arkham618]

google desktop index, ms index installed?

No.

remove Avast, see if it still happends.

Maybe as a last resort. But right now I need the protection.

Whats in hklm,soft,microsoft,windows, cv, run?

I have no idea what this means.

[DavidR]

I've configured avast! to ignore sessionstore.js, but it has not improved the situation.

Then you need to continue the investigation to identify what is being scanned (monitoring the 'show detailed info' option) so you can get an idea of what is responsible for the activity, avast doesn't just go off scanning the contents of your HDD of its own accord.

Is the avast icon rotating when this HDD activity is going on (now that you have set the standard shield to normal) ?

Do you happen to have something like a background defrag going on ?

[MiguelAngelXP]

Hmmm... last year I had a similar issue when in my second partition I installed Linux, I was surprised, but almost a half year later in february I discovered the root of the problem, my machine needed a good hardware cleanup. 

Going back to your problem, may it be a wire doing that noise?? , a not so well plugged wire into its corresponding jack. It's the only assumption that I can guess because you said that your system is new. 

Kindly regards
MiguelAngelXP 

[dewild1]

google desktop index, ms index installed?

No.

remove Avast, see if it still happends.

Maybe as a last resort. But right now I need the protection.

Whats in hklm,soft,microsoft,windows, cv, run?

I have no idea what this means.

I mean remove avast temporarly, just to test, then reinstall.. If you have pro, then do this first..




For the reg, show us this,

[Lisandro]

I've configured avast! to ignore sessionstore.js, but it has not improved the situation.

Add the other files in the same situation (as the PeerGuardian one).
Did you boot after that?