It drove me up the wall trashed system to find culprit my case system restore who are these people that sell operating systems that behave worse than viruses?.

This has been driving me crazy. I bought a new high spec Core Quad Machine, 3gb Ram, 1.5TB running Vista Home Premium. I had a problem with Disk Thrashing at first but upgraded to SP1 and it seemed to die down, appeared to be improved indexing? Anyway the thing is I have random bursts of disk activity that just make my machine unusable, and they last for a long time, generally hours. Even if i reboot it just carries on thrashing where it left off, taking about 45 mins to restart. When I stop the superfetch service it dies down instantly, but I kinda like Superfetch when it’s doing what it should do… annoying.

My Article Explains how to fix this in 2 easy steps.
http://www.ejtsystems.com/2008/08/13/vistas-disk-thrashing-tweak/

I hope it helps.

For me the problem was solved within seconds of disabling Superfetch (Services > Superfetch). Prior to this, disabling the indexing service, disk defrag and windows updates seemed to make little or no difference to the hard disk thrashing.

It seems to be coming from either the indexing service, windows updates, superfetch, or disk defrag. Its just windows automatically fixing things in the background. The only time I see this is when I start up, after that it only happens once in a while.

Tip: Go into task manager and click on performance monitor…you can see whats thrashing your disk.

SP1 fixes most of these issues, they also go away over time.

Note: This can happen in XP when Processidletasks its doing its “stuff” though its no so much of a kick in the teeth.

I’ve experienced the same issues as well. Will take a look at the suggestions posted here (turning off system restore, defrag, turn off superfetch, etc)

But before that I’m installing SP1 to see if that does the trick. I’ve got to say that after spending $1700 on a new top of the line laptop 2.3Ghz 2GB RAM. Ok, so not tip-top of the line, I figured I’d get the extra 2GB when prices were lower and it was necessary to have. Requiring 4GB of RAM (which just happens to be the max Vista can address) is over the top… very disappointing.

I turned system restore off and the thrashing stopped immediately too. FWIW this is on a high-end system: 3.2GHz core2duo, 4GB of ram and a raptor system drive. Also I’m running SP1RC so don’t expect that to fix the problem!

Be glad to hear that on Vista with SP1 ( current version SPRC1, v.744 ) all these background stuff seems to be gone or hardly noticeable. So look out when SP1 arrives.
It also fixes LOTS of other issues.
I am on Vista Business with 1,8GhZ and 1 GB Ram on an older Mainboard ( Socket A / AMD ).
So on modern machines I would expect drastic changes

I would check out what they mention in this thread: http://help.lockergnome.com/vista/Windows-Vista-Constantly-Hard-disk-ftopict65985.html

Basically it is SuperFetch (a service) that prefetches tons of files all the time. Turning that off fixes a lot…

I had the same problem. When I turned off automatic points of restore (windows shadow copies) in System protection the performance of my pc got much better and I gained lots of gigabytes space back on my hard drive:)
However you should consider all consequences of having this feature turned off.

Same experience. On a new Sony desktop with 2G, a Dell portable with 2G and a desktop with 3G! It is a combination of factors, but its sad that in finally addressing the ridiculously poor search funcationality across a pc, or even in outlook messages or contacts, they did such a lame and inefficient implenetation on search. The indexing seems to eat through memory blocks, as does the auto defrag and other features mentioned. The result is contention with the apps you want to use – and its not like 2007 Office applications are getting skinnier either – the vista features essentially require blocks that boot out the apps you are using over the course of a few hours.

It just was not ready for prime time – and feels like an XT at times. What’s stunning is how slow Microsoft is at getting any fixes up.

In addition – is anyone having problems with the wireless management system (separate from a terribly interface and that “windows is trying to fix the problem” bar that never fixes anything)? I used to use Intel ProSet, but it seems to contend with Vista’s wireless governance and code – which also seems a bit hyper-protective relative to widespread linksys boxes. So many places i used to easilier connect, its now problematic, and sometimes it just loses the Internet connection and leaves you “local.” Seems especially bad with some of the Intel ProSet abg drivers on dell’s.

With Vista, I just am spending so much time waiting and micro managing vista to optimize, so instead of getting faster and easier and more efficient, everything is slower – and the amount of time you spend getting ready to do the work or get connected with Vista is way up. It isn’t an “enabler” – its a bit of a barricade. Very disappointing.

Same experience. On a new Sony desktop with 2G, a Dell portable with 2G and a desktop with 3G! It is a combination of factors, but its sad that in finally addressing the ridiculously poor search funcationality across a pc, or even in outlook messages or contacts, they did such a lame and inefficient implenetation on search. The indexing seems to eat through memory blocks, as does the auto defrag and other features mentioned. The result is contention with the apps you want to use – and its not like 2007 Office applications are getting skinnier either – the vista features essentially require blocks that boot out the apps you are using over the course of a few hours.

It just was not ready for prime time – and feels like an XT at times. What’s stunning is how slow Microsoft is at getting any fixes up.

In addition – is anyone having problems with the wireless management system (separate from a terribly interface and that “windows is trying to fix the problem” bar that never fixes anything)? I used to use Intel ProSet, but it seems to contend with Vista’s wireless governance and code – which also seems a bit hyper-protective relative to widespread linksys boxes. So many places i used to easilier connect, its now problematic, and sometimes it just loses the Internet connection and leaves you “local.” Seems especially bad with some of the Intel ProSet abg drivers on dell’s.

With Vista, I just am spending so much time waiting and micro managing vista to optimize, so instead of getting faster and easier and more efficient, everything is slower – and the amount of time you spend getting ready to do the work or get connected with Vista is way up. It isn’t an “enabler” – its a bit of a barricade. Very disappointing.

Turning off system restore has seemed to do the trick for me. Unfortunately there isn’t an option to have restore on ‘manual’ only – it’s all or nothing, which is a pain!

I’m not using IE very much so that’s not what’s causing my problem. I believe it’s a paging issue because that’s the only thing that would be happening on resume from standby.

Same. But in my case it was IE 7 continually accessing the hard drive, which on my Shuttle is loud, so very annoying. Vista help i free by phone first 90 days, so use it. They had me clean out and reset more than i care to remember, and I don’t remember anything that was dramatic at the moment. But since, it has not been as bad. Magic, unfortunately. IE7 still does more disc access than other browsers I’ve tried. The lack of no fuzz send to one note and a few other IE add-ins make it hard to give up.

The shadow saving may be part of it.

the core question is, what are the advantages of Vista? Speech recognition is they key one for me. I like the side bar, but its more quaint than super useful.

The extra security and clicks necessary to open some things is just a pain. I also do not get an equivalent list of files in the new “Document” and the old “My Documents”. This has made using ShareFolder more difficult.

I’ve been running Vista since beta’s last summer on two older tablets. The Motion 1300 1Gz is the minimum spec to even install.

Low resources hardware running Vista CAN run smoothly and fast, BUT the hard disk activity and CPU % usage fine tuning are THE key ever getting a handle.

The reality is that default Vista installs need to be feature slashed to address both. It takes time and effort and determination that it IS possible.

Do whatever it takes to get your hard drive LED to blink only accessing data and stay idle otherwise. Forget indexing, auto defrag, all backround features deselected.

Get the CPU% down to 5-15% idle and spiking 100% only as peaks, not pegged. Brutal hog software elimination policy, startup prrocesses slashing, all auto updaters blocked, etc.

It’s NOT one issue, its the culmination of multiple inefficiencies saddled on Vista, either as shipped or user software.

The core problem is that by design Vista will work as intended on later generation horsepower with 4GB RAM or more and quad chips and hybrid drives better able to handle the draw.

For now, portables especially, fine tuning and taming and making choices of feature benefit vs cost tradeoff are the answer.