on my new laptop I noticed that when I first start windows the hard drive will run constantly for about at least 7 minutes after everything appears to have fully loaded and I can run the computer as normal.then it will stop for sometimes and oftten will start up again later for no aparent reason. for example its happening right now and I am have open are 3 internet explorer windows. I was wondering if there could be anything hardware related here or if it's just another new feature in microsoft's masterpiece we know as vista.

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Welcome to Vista!

My first suggestion would be to backup your drive, FAST. This is what happened not long after I installed Vista on my old laptop [admittedley, it's an Acer, but still...], and it eventually ended up with error messages popping up right after reformatting. Putting an ear to the drive, I could hear the tell-tale signs that the drive is failing. It may not be the problem here, but I really do suggest that if you have any important, you back it up *right now*. It would also be nice to see a few of your posts in topics other than your own

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lol yeah I know I should contribute more and I will when I get some time. work and school has been keeping me busy but I do get bored from time to time and I'll know where to go. But anyway yeah I dont really have anything to backup since it's pretty new, and I'd hope that that would also mean that the drive isn't failing. I think I'm going to try partitioning the hard drive and installing XP on it which will tell me if it's just vista.

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Hmm... what brand is the ltop and, in particular, the HD?

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it's an HP and I'm not sure about the hdd I don't know what they use. I don't know this computer very well yet so it's hard for me to know what is normal for it. I have seen another fairly new desktop do this same thing so Im guessing that it's pretty normal, however even so I'm not so pleased with unnessecary hard drive use and wear.

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Sounds to me like it's the fan in your laptop.
In my acer the fan turns on and off. It depends on what I'm doing.
If I running a game I can hear the fan running faster, but when I'm just on the internet it's not usually running that fast.

EDIT: Since you state your laptop is new, I think that it is the OS (or Office) trying to index everything. Of course, getting rid of crapware like google/yahoo toolbars may not hurt. but that last bit is purely my opinion.

ORIGINAL: Have you done some through scans for virus' and other malware? Also, is this problem new since installing something? It could be that your computer be trying to index all of the files on the hard drive or that your virus scanner is scanning the system at times.
Have you tried all of the standard fixes (disk clean up, defrag, virus scan, registry clean/optimize program)?

Still, I agree that if for no other reason than you stated you haven't.. Back up your data. Then try some of the standard fixes listed above. Additionally, you can run the registry checker program from the command prompt as well as the system file checker. These are limited. I would however, most assuredly run a scandisk, which will take some time on the boot after you schedule it.

For scandsik, in My computer, Right-Click the hard disk in question, select Properties, then the tab for Tools. Then the button for Check Now. if it finds some problem sectors/clusters on your drive it will try to move the data to a different section.

The registry checker actually runs each time you start your computer, which is part of why i wondered about a registry cleaning program.

These are not very detailed but will alert you for some obvious problems.

Possibly more later, it's time for me to head home.

Before you start freaking out that it might be hardware, put your computer in a clean boot. Basically turning off all non-Microsoft services and things that automatically startup on boot.

Start \ Run --- Type in 'msconfig' without the quotes

In SERVICES tab, check the box that says 'hide all Microsoft services' then click on disable all

In the STARTUP tab, click on disable all and then OK, it will tell you that you have to restart the computer

Test for functionality, if this fixes it then you have just proven that it is software. Go back into msconfig and enable all the services and reboot.

If it is still working fine, then you have proven that it is something in the startup items that is causing the problem.

This is where it gets tedious and you go back in to STARTUP tab. Write down what is in there and turn half back on, restart. Test computer

Through process of elimination, you can figure out who the culprit is . Once you deal with the cause of the problem you can put the computer back into normal startup.

Hope this helps.

i just did a clean reinstall of windows vista with my own disc, and though it did not fix this problem, I did get a noticable increase in performance now that I've removed all the HP crap. I've decided to not worry about it for now because I'm pretty sure its just vista being stupid. I would like to eventually partition the HDD and install XP aswell, however I was unsucessful at my last attempt to do this because the partition manager I used, (gparted, linux based) was incompatible with my sata HDD, but i guess this is material for another thread anyway.

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