Acknowledgement, Chesteer.  Good question.  I don't have a system to compare directly with, so not a direct answer.  But I've seen hundreds of Dell desktops from W98 to WMC and 'constant' drive activity is not right.  Even if you invoke the resource-consumptive 'indexing' feature, the drive shouldn't have to seek every second.

 

So the history of this system is, originally it worked OK then one day it started this, then you did Dell System Restore and it continued doing it?  There is a level of malware that transcends System Restore, but getting it is about as rare as being hit by lightning.  There are also hardware errors (chattering interrupts is one version, chattering 'new disc' IDE packets another, neither is common but both can happen) that can keep an otherwise-idle system 'busy'.  At extreme settings, or layered with other similar products, antivirus programs can cause constant disk access.  (But the original image should not have had those liabilities.)

 

Leaving plenty of space for better responses.....

Tracking it down on your own is rewarding--good direction.  Looked in event log?  Maybe the event has been kind enough to leave its signature. 

 

Grasping at straws--it does this disconnected from any network, right?  I don't see why malware that went to all the trouble to elude System Restore would just ping the drive every second--what could it possibly be doing of any significance?

 

On the third hand, I haven't seen Dell's implementation of the AMD chipset.  This could possibly be an artifact of that, and 'normal'. (?)  You'd like to think Tech Support would know that.  Maybe they do but they're not allowed to say it.  You'd like to think you could believe them if they did say it.  Welcome to commerce in the 21st century, eh?  :smileywink:

Thanks, x_lab_rat for the info. The first few days I had the system (mid-December) I didn't notice the activity. It may have been there but I got busy downloading my favorite programs and trying to get rid of the marketing-ware that Dell loads its computers with. After 4 or 5 days I noticed the drive seemed to be seeking all the time. I contacted tech support by email, and, after a couple of exchanges, they suggested the restore. I did that and the drive activity continued immediately after the restore. I think the problem was there from day one, but I didn't notice it.

 

I don't know if it's serious enough to demand a fix or replacement or if I should just work on things like using a registry debugger to clean it up.

Maybe the problem is the Norton security junk Dell markets by loading it on their new computers. Look at this thread of comments about how lousy Symantec has become.

 

http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10532-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=29180&messageID=543884&start=-16

 

My computer is crawling with Symantec files. I've suspected that it might be the problem with the hard drive reads but figured I wouldn't delete it until the trial expired. (Yeah, I'm cheap.) But I'm going to do it now. Trouble is, sounds like it's about as easy as removing a metastasized tumor.

 

So if I get rid of Norton, what's the best security software?