Vista super slow and unresponsive, 100% hdd usage?

[xeroq]

OK. Well this problem started last night. My laptop is really slow and unresponsive. I was wondering at the time if a program was using up 100% cpu usage but this is not the case. I went into task manager and clicked on the resource monitor and started monitoring my system.

- I noticed that the HDD is at 100% usage at all times.

- I noticed my ram would generally spike from 40% used up to 100% used then slowly climb back down then climb back up and spike again.

- CPU usage sometimes goes up to 50% and stays there then drops back down to 4%. While at 50% i checked which process could be using this much cpu but the highest percent of cpu usage i saw was 5%. it showed no program using around 40 - 45%.

so yeah i am clueless on what to do since i dont know much about vista.

My laptop came with vista originally but i decided to switch over to xp. After numerous problems with xp i just got fed up with it and came back to vista.

Here are my laptop specs.
HP Pavilion dv6604nr
AMD Athlon X2 1.8 GHz
1 GB Ram
160 GB HDD
Nvidia Geforce 7150

I know i need more ram but i just dont have the money atm. When i first got the laptop vista ran fine with 1 gb of ram.

so yeah any ideas?

Thanks
- XeroQ


EDIT: Disabled Superfetch and turned off Scheduled scan. That looked like it did the trick but after a few minutes it started again

 

[notherdude]

1. Does it do it in safe mode?

2. Does it do this constantly after several boots and over many hours?

3. If this is after a fresh install of Vista it could be indexing - Vista indexes your drive for fast searching.

When you hit ctl, alt, del and enter task manager does this HD usage continue WHILE you are in task manager or not?

If not try DL 'process explorer' and see what it shows using all that HD and RAM. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

[xeroq]

1. Does it do it in safe mode?

No.

2. Does it do this constantly after several boots and over many hours?

Yes. Today I left it on for about 3 - 4 hours and it was still doing it.

3. If this is after a fresh install of Vista it could be indexing - Vista indexes your drive for fast searching.

Yes, this is a fresh copy. I just installed vista a week ago.

Thank You for the program. Very Useful!

I closed a process something about cache and the problem stopped. I'll figure out which process it is tommorow.

EDIT : Figured out it was search indexer. Gonna leave my laptop on over night and let it finish indexing i guess.

 

[amdfangirl]

While your at it, you might as well defrag your hard drive =)

 

[xeroq]

Thanks for your help.

After leavng my laptop on overnight to let it index whatever it was doing, it has now stopped. Laptop is running fine and does not get slow anymore. Thanks to all who have helped me.

Thank You! I will come again

- XeroQ

 

[notherdude]

Glad you stuck with it. Many a hesitant new Vista user had probably un-installed Vista after enduring a day or so of this very beneficial process and then come on forums for the next two years screaming about how slow Vista is.