Another 2 questions for the geeks

[burnsbyrne]

The first question is this: I have a PC at home and at work I generally use three different PCs. Sometimes, when I am not actively interacting with them the hard drives go crazy and start whining away as if they are trying to fly away. Are they doing anti virus scans or something like that? I just worry that it is not good for the hard drive.

The second question is just something I have wondered about. When shutting down a PC the desk top color fades to monochrome briefly, then the color returns while Windows completes the shut down. Anybody know why that happens?

Thanks, Mike

[djm]

1. Yes
2. No

djm

[s1m0n]

The first question is this: I have a PC at home and at work I generally use three different PCs. Sometimes, when I am not actively interacting with them the hard drives go crazy and start whining away as if they are trying to fly away. Are they doing anti virus scans or something like that? I just worry that it is not good for the hard drive.

These days windows does a whole ton of stuff automatically, from downloading updates to creating a system restore checkpoint to defrags, virus scans, etc. Also, all kinds of programs can add their own scheduled events, like google desktop search, which indexes your drive when you're not using your system if you have it installed. I don't want to single out google; that's just the one I happened to think of. Almost any software can do the same.

If you're interested, you can open the windows task manager by hitting control-alt-delete (it's safe, but only do it once). The first two tabs are applications - to see what programs are open and running - and processes, which shows which sub-routines are actually running. If you check the CPU column, the number by each process is the percentage of your computer's processing cycles it's using. This will give you a rough idea what process is working the hardest, and with that you can google the name of the service that's running, and find out what it is. The cool thing about the task manager is that this table updates itself in real time when you have it open, so you can open it on your desktop, deactivate your screensaver or powersaver (so you can see the screen without having to use any interface, which will shut off anything that's designed to run in the background) and then keep an eye on it when the HD starts chattering to see what's up.

The second question is just something I have wondered about. When shutting down a PC the desk top color fades to monochrome briefly, then the color returns while Windows completes the shut down. Anybody know why that happens?

Behind the graphic (GUI - graphical user interface) desktop we all interact with using mice, etc, there's a command shell operating in the background, much like old-school DOS, if you remember it, or like a command prompt window that you can still access under system utilities. I suspect that this is what you're calling 'monochrome' - grey letters scrolling by on a black background, just like you see during (some of) the boot up process.

It takes a certain amount of code and complexity to operate that GUI system, and during start up and shut down there will be times when that system isn't operating, so the computer falls into the command shell. As part of the process of making windows friendly, since at least windows 3.1 MS has opted to conceal a lot of this process behind what amounts to wallpaper: a fairly static image that has some colour but doesn't do anything. It differs from the usual desktop in that you can't interact with it by clicking things, etc, even though it looks more colourful than the commandshell that you see briefly it's actually doing less: you can't control it and it doesn't even tell you what's happening, the way watching the scrolling commands would. Or used to, before they went by as quickly as they do now.

[avanutria]

I've seen the monochrome thing, though my current vista machine doesn't do it. It only comes up when the dialogue box is showing asking you whether you want to shut down or not. It's just a graphical effect thing, nothing to worry about.

[hans]

Going into the twilight zone. The beginning of the end...

[emmline]

It is because your teenage son left too many anime fan-fic windows open, each of which is a portal to trojan and spyware hell.
The computer is exerting loudly as it fights to stay free of evil bonds.

Well, that's what the pc here is doing anyway, thankfully with the help of Kaspersky.

[Protean]

The monochrome desktop thing is just something that MS added to the OS because they think it looks nice. That's it. I think they added this in XP, but it could have been in Win2K, don't remember any more. The same thing happens if you change your display settings (assuming it takes long enough). Not sure why MS opted for that, but there you go. You'll notice that the dialog box that's up still has color, it's just the desktop that they desaturate.

[burnsbyrne]

Thanks for the information, everyone. I have been teetering on the question of whether computers are a useful tool for the 21st century or the spawn of the devil. Your answers have tilted me back to the "useful tool" side, at least got now. Both the whirring hard drive and the fade to black and white were bothering me. Now that I have logical reasons why the computer is doing that I can let down my guard a bit against the "spawn of the devil" side.

My sons are both 30 +/- two years. They have Macs so I think they don't have these problems. They have the cute little Mac-in-the-box -- the computer in a box that's smaller than a lunchbox. I am sure that they can make even these sturdy little machines crash and burn occasionally.

Thanks again and beware the devil's spawn!
Mike

[herbivore12]

Are you sure it's your hard drive making the whining noise? The fans inside computers that keep everything cool can get mighty noisy when working hard, and can sound pretty much like a jet getting ready to take off. It can be especially bad if the fans are worn; sometimes swapping them out for a new one can significantly reduce the noise.

Could also be all the work your computer's doing, as s1m0n mentioned.

Hope you get to the bottom of it!

[burnsbyrne]

Are you sure it's your hard drive making the whining noise? The fans inside computers that keep everything cool can get mighty noisy when working hard, and can sound pretty much like a jet getting ready to take off. It can be especially bad if the fans are worn; sometimes swapping them out for a new one can significantly reduce the noise.

Could also be all the work your computer's doing, as s1m0n mentioned.

Hope you get to the bottom of it!

No, I have spent enough time with my head in a CPU to learn the sound of a noisy fan and they can be noisy! Besides, a noisy fan would't make the hard drive LED light up on the front of the computer. The scanning for viruses, etc theory sounds right for my home computer but one of the PCs I use at work does it too. That computer is attached to the network and, although it can also function as a stand alone I can't think that much scanning software is running on it.

Back at St Mel Elementary School the nuns told us there were things we just have to take on faith. Perhaps this is just one of those things.
Mike

[fearfaoin]

That computer is attached to the network and, although it can also function as a stand alone I can't think that much scanning software is running on it.

I think you're thinking in terms of dumb terminals.
These days, even if attached to a network, a PC
will act like one that isn't, and will have local virus
software which will run scans.

[burnsbyrne]

That computer is attached to the network and, although it can also function as a stand alone I can't think that much scanning software is running on it.

I think you're thinking in terms of dumb terminals.
These days, even if attached to a network, a PC
will act like one that isn't, and will have local virus
software which will run scans.

You're right. The PC in question is not a dumb terminal so it's probably running maintenance scans.

[Wanderer]

the likely culprits for the hard drive activity are: antivirus scans and disk indexing.

on disk indexing: the most recent versions of windows index all of your files, so that when you use the "find file" feature, it finds stuff pretty quickly. Usually, when you're not doing anything, Windows uses the spare CPU cycles to do as much of that indexing as it can.

I used to have a pretty noisy disk drive and turned indexing off because it bugged me. Now, I have a whisper-quiet drive, so I leave it on. If you are interested in this kind of thing, google search "Windows Indexing Service"


As Protean said about the monochrome fade: It's just a 'special effect' put in because it looks nice.
There's a small discussion about it here, including how to emulate the effect in VFP9:
http://weblogs.foxite.com/bernardbout/a ... /6871.aspx