Whirly Gig Sound?

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Here is a simple, honest question to those who have a minx of experience with computers, I have zilch. Except, if the sucker don't come up in the same form it went down, last time, I powered it dowm, then, I am toast, because I don't know what to do. My expertise is in handling a few million $$, give or take a few. The question has to do with Internet security. How's come I can be "clicked: into a post, and suddenly my hard drive goes into a frenzy? I am not saving anything, so what causes the drive to start rotating? Honest answers only.

-- Computer Illiterate (yeswedo@exist.com), January 06, 2000

Answers

The most likely reason is because your computer has too little physical RAM and the swap file is being used. The swap file is a part of your hard drive that's set aside by Windows to act as (slow) RAM when you run out of physical RAM. It's no big deal and I wouldn't worry about it.

Jim

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), January 06, 2000.


Sounds right. Mine did the same thing, stopped it when I added RAM (and cleaned up my files with Norton Utilities).

-- (4@5.6), January 06, 2000.

You might want to clean up your system. What operating system are you currently running? If Windows (95 or 98) you can clean up your system a bit, by selecting Start, Program Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Select C: drive and let the system clean up the files on your system. If you've been surfing much, a whole bunch of files area automatically stored on your system and from time to time, it's good to follow the above procedure and run this process to clean up your system.

You should also defrag your system, which will help clean things up. To do so, selecting Start, Program Accessories, System Tools, Disk Disk Deframentor (first run the above procedure to get rid of junk files). This process will clean things up on your hard drive, you should run this about once a week, depending on how often you use your computer.

The above process apply to Windows 95 or 98, which I'm assuming you use.

Of course, you're description of your "problem" is too vague to actualy know why your hard drive is being accessed. While surfing the Internet, a whole lot of files are loaded onto your hard drive. Cookies (these are temporary files) and web pages are loaded into temporary directories automatically. Most of these files are automatically deleted after several days, but it's still a good idea to follow the above steps and clean up your system from time to time.

Also, never shut your system down with a "hard shutdown" by turning the system off if you can help it. This causes many files to be left on your system and a shutdown by selecting Start, Shut Down, Shut Down, is always the best way to shut down. This closes all programs, internet connection and shuts the system down "clean".

There are times when a "hard shutdown" is necessary, such as when your system hangs up and nothing can make it work right. It's too complicated to explain here, but avoid this if possible. I hope this helps.

-- Truth (lifeofliberty@yahoo.com), January 06, 2000.


So that's why when you do hard shutdowns, after a while you find your hdd fragmented because the files never had a chance to be written back in their correct places.. interesting..

-- Brent Nichols (b-nichol@ihug.co.nz), January 07, 2000.

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