Thrashing disk drive - Does your hard drive start working like crazy for no apparent reason when you aren't even using it? - Disk Thrashing
There are many many possible reasons for this annoyance. Try these possible solutions in this order.
Please let me know if you have any comments or any other suggestions.
Warning: Before starting to troubleshoot, you should back up all your important data files to a CD/DVD or other media.
To find out what's happening on your system, use a filesystem monitoring tool.
If you don't use Windows XP's built-in search often (like every day), disabling indexing can significantly speed up your PC.
By default Windows XP indexes files on your hard drive and stores them in memory to speed up its' built-in search. But if you rarely use Windows search, turn off indexing to free up memory and CPU horsepower for the files and applications you actually do use. A few simple how-to steps after the jump.
To turn off indexing:
Open up "My Computer."
Right-click on your hard drive (usually "C:") and choose "Properties."
Uncheck the box at the bottom that reads "Allow Indexing Service to..."
Click OK, and files will be removed from memory. This removal may take a few minutes to complete.
To disable the indexing service:
In the "Start" menu, choose "Run."
Type "services.msc" and press Enter.
Scroll-down to "Indexing Service" and double-click it.
If the service status is "Running", then stop it by pressing the "Stop" button.
To make sure this service doesn't run again, under "Startup Type:", choose "Disabled."
Windows search will still work if you perform these steps, but it will work more slowly than if indexing was enabled.
RAM - Do you have enough memory in your system? You need at least 512MB for WindowsXP. A GB (1024MB) would be better.
The more RAM you have, the less the system will have to save to disk using the pagefile.
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