amarante :
I have always noticed that my HDD starts reading something when my PC is idle so today I checked it out. It's reading a file repository folder in windows folder. It goes on for quite a while and the file names are bunch of numbers but the majority of them had "amd64" in the name.
What does this folder do exactly and why does my HDD read it when my PC is idle?
I also have an Intel processor so I can't understand why amd64 files are in there.
You will probably find it is reading in the winsxs folder, which is the Side By Side. This allows multiple versions of dll's and other resources to coexist on your computer, and applications which really on different versions of the same file to run, without the historical DLL hell, when a new install upgraded a version of a DLL that another application needs.
Windows manages all the trickiness behind it, and serving of the correct version DLL to the appropriate program.
The naming convention of the folders appears to be a binary format designation, and amd64 indicates a 64bit file, x86 a 32 bit file, msil a .NET file (i.e. not a native compiled binary). The others, come up with your own conclusions.
As to why your machine is reading the files, possibly a virus scan, or some other application configured to start work when the PC is idle (generally this is so it doesn't impact on your UE). You'd be better off checking out to see what application is performing the work, rather than looking at what files are being read. There are plenty of tools for this. Sysinternals provides a few (ProcMon, ProcessExplorer), even Task Manager (or Resource Monitor) is useful for this so see what starts using CPU cycles.
Edit: And some things can hide from Task Manager if you use it to view CPU activity, plus you need to make sure you are viewing for All Users, and Kernel activity shows as Idle activity in certain circumstances.
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