constant hard drive activity
 

Hi guys hope you can help,i changed my os from winme to xp pro all worked fine but ive started encountering the following problem,monitor goes off and the hard drive light is on constantly,cannot reset only option is to switch off,if i switch back on immediatly the same,monitors off and constant hard drive activity,if i leave the pc off overnight it usually boots ok with no further problems,then a couple of nights or perhaps weeks and the same problem re-occurs,it doesnt seem to be overheating because it can happena t any time,not necessarily if the pc's been on a while

its an old pc
1.4 amd athlon processor
40 gb hd
256 ram
any ideas?

Re: constant hard drive activity
 

Are you using the PC when the monitor turns off? i.e. using the mouse?
I know it's a stupid question but I think this might be some kind of standby mode with the Content Indexer running at the same time.

Re: constant hard drive activity
 

yeh don't think its standby mode because it happens at random times when the pc is being used,had a general look around at it seems there may conflicts between ms office and xp pro??

what you reckon?

Re: constant hard drive activity
 

Could be hardware failure, have you ran any diagnostics on your ram, hard drive etc??

Re: constant hard drive activity
 

Check your Windows XP event log Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Events and see if theres any errors in there. I reckon yourn screen going back, etc. could be your PC Bluescreening, writing a Savedump and rebooting its just you dont let it get that far?

Re: constant hard drive activity
 

thank guys i'll check the event log and let you know,pc's not at home any longer ive sold it to a friend....lets hope its something simple

thanks again