100% disk usage!

[Kimochi]

I'm not doing anything demanding, (virus scan, that's it) yet I get 100% disk usage.

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/8807/diskusagecv5.jpg

This causes the system to lock up, and is very embarrassing considering this is a mid-high end PC.

2.40 GHz Q6600
2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 RAM
Western Digital 250GB (WD2500JS-00MHB0)
BFG 8800GTS 320MB OC
Evga Nforce 680i SLI Mobo

I haven't had any problems like this before. What could be causing this?

Also, I noticed the PCI and RAM voltages are in bad states. Do they need to be increased or decreased? Only one PCI-E slot used, two DDR2 slots used.

Thanks!

[shadowpr]

What happens if you stop the virus scan?

[Kimochi]

What happens if you stop the virus scan?

The disk usage goes down again. Surely a mere virus scan shouldn't create 100% disk usage?

[Cricket]

How much free space does that hard drive have?

:) Cricket

[glc]

The disk usage goes down again. Surely a mere virus scan shouldn't create 100% disk usage?

Sure it can - that's an intensive operation.

[Kimochi]

How much free space does that hard drive have?

:) Cricket

There's about 150GB free space.

[Kimochi]

Sure it can - that's an intensive operation.

I understand. However, I've never had this problem before; I could run a virus scan, whilst extracting several ISOs to my hard drive without the system locking up.

[shadowpr]

Might look to see if there is a priority level in your virus scan.

[Kimochi]

Hi, this is still a huge problem for me.

Any operation that is remotely hd-intensive causes 100% disk usage. This could be something as simple as extracting a RAR file, or installing some software from a dvd disk.

This is not a low-end machine. It wasn't that long ago that I could extract several RARs and ISOs, whilst downloading a number of a large files, with the performance only slightly affected.

Here's a screenshot of Nvidia Monitor:
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/2372/diskusagews9.jpg

Do you think the voltage might be set too high/low? Could this be the cause of the problem?

Thanks for any furthur suggestions!

[Kimochi]

Here is a screenshot of Windows' performance monitor:
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/7606/performancebg7.jpg

As you can clearly see, the disk time is kept at 100%.

By following this (http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-6349-5031852.html) guide, I was able to discover that it's the expected programs causing the lockup. However, this still doesn't change the fact that this was not happening before, and that the tasks being run are fairly trivial (my old PC of 5 years could easily handle the extraction of a RAR file without problems).

Any suggestions on what to do next? Simply ignoring the problem is not an option in my case.

Thanks.

[Kimochi]

Fixed the voltages OK, but the problem persists.

[shadowpr]

Have you tried scanning the Hard drive using the manufacturers diagnostics?

What version of windows?

[liambl]

All of the things you say causes 100% disk usage should use 100%. The hard drive is the slowest part of any pc and therefore other parts have to wait for it to load data. So since you have a high end CPU the harddrive has to run at its max capacity to try to keep up with the rest of the system. I think your problem is not related to disk usage.

[Jomama]

You might consider an HD speed test. I have used HDtach for benchmarking USB sticks but it also test HD speeds. It is freeware.

[adam416]

I would try basic hard drive maintenance first. Have you tried anything? (Defrag)