[980] in winnt
Re: constant disk access on XP professional machine
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Huxley, Bil)
Thu Nov 14 07:58:01 2002
Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.2.20021114074322.04e29460@po9.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 07:54:50 -0500
To: Alex T Prengel <alexp@mit.edu>, winpartners@mit.edu
From: "Huxley, Bil" <huxley@MIT.EDU>
Cc: alexp@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <200211110425.XAA29019@dit.mit.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Hi Alex,
I know this is a rather delayed reply, but since I haven't seen any other
responses I thought you might find it useful.
A couple of tools came to light a while back for evaluating various system
behaviors which may help you track down the constant (or continual) disk
activities under XP. RegMon from 'System Internals' allowed us to monitor
all activity against the Windows Registry under Win2000 to track down ACL
type issues. As I recall, there was various continual Registry access when
I used this tool and I had to set filters in order to isolate the activity
of the applications whose errors we were trying to analyze. The FileMon
utility may be a better starting point for your analysis. Both tools used
to be available at
<http://www.sysinternals.com>
though I have not checked that site for quite some time. I do have
installers from two years ago if you can't find something more recent.
Good Luck - I hope this is helpful,
Bil
>X-Warning: mitvmc.mit.edu: Host PACIFIC-CARRIER-ANNEX.MIT.EDU claimed to
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>X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2
>Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 14:03:32 -0500
>To: Nathan Matta <whatsa@MIT.EDU>, itpartners@MIT.EDU
>From: Jonathan McIndoe Hunt <jmhunt@MIT.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Win2000 and software execution bugs
>
>Hi Nathan,
>
>The problem you are experiencing is likely a registry permission issue,
>especially if the files permissions are already open.
>
>I know that Netscape likes to use certain keys that are typically secured
>and wants write permissions. I don't happen to remember which ones they
>are. To find out which registry keys these programs are failing to be able
>to access, I would suggest downloading RegMon from SysInternals
><http://www.sysinternals.com/regmon.htm> and using the runas feature for
>Win2000 to run as an Administrator. Then start messenger and see which
>registry accesses are failing to figure out which keys to loosen
>permission on.
>
>For the Eudora problem, where is the mail being stored, i.e. where is the
>eudora.ini located? If it is in the C:\Program Files\Eudora folder, then
>you maybe experiencing some funky permission problems related to Microsoft
>Installers. During the installation of Eudora 5.0 from Qualcomm, it states
>that installing to the Program Files folder will not work on Windows
>2000. If the eudora.ini and subsequent mailboxes are stored in the Program
>Files folder, then try setting up a new mail account using the Add Multiple
>Users program that was included with MIT Eudora 4.0.2 installer. It should
>be in the Start Menu.
>
>Let me know if this helps.
>
>Jonathan
>
>At 01:11 PM 12/20/2000 -0500, Nathan Matta wrote:
> >I've got 2 separate (but related) problems with some Windows 2000 Pro
> >machines. In all cases mentioned below, the machines are laptops (though
> >of 2 different models)
> >
> >1) On my own machine, I cannot run Netscape Messenger. I can run Netscape
> >Communicator and Netscape Composer, but when I try to run Messenger it
> >displays the splash screen, but never executes the program. In this case
> >the version is 4.74. If you watch the Task Manager, a process labled
> >Netscape appears while the splash screen is up, then when the splash goes
> >away, so does the process. In this case, I am an administrator of the
> machine.
> >
> >2) On another machine neither Netscape or Eudora will run unless the user
> >has administrative privileges. The symptoms are the same. You run the
> >program, the splash pops up, splash disappears, program never
> >executes. As mentioned, for administrators everything works just
> >dandy. As far as we can determine, all directory and file permissions are
> >wide open. As a side note, Office 2000 runs just fine even for non-admins.
> >
> >Any thoughts?
> >
> >Nathan
> >============================
> >Nathan Matta
> >Library Technology Consultant
> >Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> >E-mail: whatsa@mit.edu
> >Phone: (617) 258-5009
> >
At 11/10/2002 11:25 PM -0500, Alex T Prengel wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>I just bought a new desktop running XP Professional (SP 1) and have run into
>a significant annoyance- I'm trying to determine if it's a real problem that
>I'm justified in complaining to the vendor about (Micro Center- it's their
>current high-end Powerspec).
>
>Whenever the machine is running, and idle as far as I'm aware, the
>disk is constantly accessed about once a second. A bit of poking
>around with taskmgr shows that this is due to lsass.exe. Googling
>around a bit shows that various other people have run into this, on XP
>and earlier Windows versions, but unfortunately no clear solution
>presents itself for my situation. In one case someone said that disabling
>CTFmon.exe stopped this problem for them- but CTFmon is used in Office
>products, and I don't have any of those on the machine.
>
>The problem showed up as soon as I started the machine, and before I
>installed or changed anything. The machine has an antivirus program
>installed- I disabled it and rebooted but it made no difference. I can't
>see any suspicious running processes that might be related, but then
>I don't know a whole lot about XP...
>
>Hardware includes DVD and CD R/W drives- nothing external connected at
>the moment.
>
>"Windows annoyances" didn't have anything very useful for this specific
>situation. I didn't find anything very helpful in the Microsoft Knowledge
>Base either.
>
>So- does anyone have an idea what might be causing this and how to stop it?
>If the store tries to give me the line that this is normal, should I buy it?
>
> Many thanks for any illumination,
>
> Alex
