Pwr@p. Wed, 12 Oct
2016 22:03:24 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, wrote:

Hi,

Often when I'm just sitting there reading or doing something
that's not bothering the hard drive, or right after it has booted
up but I haven't started using it yet, I can hear the hard drive
crank up and start making it's busy noises when it seems like
there should be nothing for it to do. Is there a way to view what
it IS doing? If so, can we tell if it's a virus or malware or
something, and find out where they are so we can try to get rid of
them?

You could use Process Monitor by Sys Internals if you want to see which
program(s) may be reading/writing data. Or, Diskmon if you just want to
see what the HD is doing. As in, read/write, time, sector, bytes
written/read.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...processmonitor
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...ernals/diskmon

The older versions of Sysinternals apps supported XP, this suite
partially does. Diskmon works, Process Monitor does not. I didn't check
all of them, but, it's unlikely the majority are partially/fully
functional on XP.

--
People you encounter every day are fighting battles you know nothing
about. Be kind.