I openly and freely admit that I am mentally challenged when it comes to computers, with that being said, can anyone give me a clue as to what is happening with it??

Used to be when I started my computer either from being totally off or just from 'sleep' mode it would do the normal things like start windows run it's checks or whatever the hell they do, while in the process of doing this, that little red light blinks ferociously I assume to tell me that it is 'working' or involved in a process what ever.

Then it would normally go out and I would not see it again until I initiated some activety then it would start again to show me it is working/processing, again this is normal and expected.

Here is the problem (finally), lately the damn light just keeps running and running like its working/processing and doesn't seem to go off, sometimes it will just keep blinking away for 30 or 40 min. even if I have done nothing, I expect it to process when it starts up or tell it to do some thing but this has me concerned, I have run my virus programs (avast) and spam and pop up blockers anti spyware and every thing comes back clean, NO VIRUSES OR SPYWARE are found.

So what is the deal here. Is my computer being 'spied' on??? Should I just adjust my tin foil hat and just forget it???

Yeah I know I sound paranoid, but is there a 'legitimate' reason for what it's doing??

As a side note I have checked the 'Task manager' when it is doing this and it only showes that windows is on and I'm on the internet. No other tasks are indicated.


Any explaination is welcome.  Also as I said before, my computer fu is weak, so type s l o o o w l y....

go to "geekstogo.com" listen to them..they know there shit, and will place someone to see you through, and get back your computer from the gates of hell....

accept no substitutes...geekstogo.com

a drive may be failing (do you hear your hard drive while the light is on?)

or the motherboard may be near it's end.

when was the last time you defragged your hard drive?

Quoted: go to "geekstogo.com" listen to them..they know there shit, and will place someone to see you through, and get back your computer from the gates of hell.... accept no substitutes...geekstogo.com

So your saying I'm not crazy??? Do they charge for this service??

Is you spyware up to date? Check it for updates. Might try deleting all your cookies and temp internet files. If these temp files get too large it can slow your machine down. You can set the file size limit to minimum to keep it from biulding up.

What you're seeing is your hard disk access light blinking to show that there's some activity going on.  Possibly some type of scheduled action, like a virus or spyware scan, defragmentation or Windows resizing the page file.  If you bring up the task manager and click on Processes, you should see which process is accessing the hard disk, they'll be a CPU usage number next to each process.  Idle Process doesn't count, when nothing is going on at all Idle process should be from 97 to 99 percent, it's usage percentage will go down as other processes use processor time.  When you know the name of the process accessing the hard disk (using the processor time when nothing else is going on), either look it up on Google to find out what it is or report it back here and someone will respond.

Quoted: Quoted: go to "geekstogo.com" listen to them..they know there shit, and will place someone to see you through, and get back your computer from the gates of hell.... accept no substitutes...geekstogo.com So your saying I'm not crazy??? Do they charge for this service??

absoultly FREE!!! it is the best thing that happened to my lap top...

Quoted: a drive may be failing (do you hear your hard drive while the light is on?) or the motherboard may be near it's end. when was the last time you defragged your hard drive?

The drive and mother board were replaced under warrenty about a year ago, the only thing I hear is the rapid clicking when the light is blinking away furiously.. It has always 'sounded' like this so I think that would be normal....???

The blinking light and the clicking is the computer accessing the hard drive. Make sure you don't have a whole lot of crap running in the background and, as mentioned, defrag the drive.

Quoted: What you're seeing is your hard disk access light blinking to show that there's some activity going on.  Possibly some type of scheduled action, like a virus or spyware scan, defragmentation or Windows resizing the page file.  If you bring up the task manager and click on Processes, you should see which process is accessing the hard disk, they'll be a CPU usage number next to each process.  Idle Process doesn't count, when nothing is going on at all Idle process should be from 97 to 99 percent, it's usage percentage will go down as other processes use processor time.  When you know the name of the process accessing the hard disk (using the processor time when nothing else is going on), either look it up on Google to find out what it is or report it back here and someone will respond.

I just checked the task manager and it showes 48 processes, with a cpu usage of only2 to 4% but the light is not running right now....

All computers are possessed  It's just a matter of how well they are willing to cooperate with the user.

Quoted: The blinking light and the clicking is the computer accessing the hard drive. Make sure you don't have a whole lot of crap running in the background and, as mentioned, defrag the drive.

I'll defrag shortly, but how do I know what is running in the 'background'?? And how should I turn it off if possible???

Quoted: All computers are possessed  It's just a matter of how well they are willing to cooperate with the user.

Yeah I'm starting to think it's more of a pain than its worth, I guess it's only a pain when the operator is an idiot like me.

Quoted: Quoted: All computers are possessed  It's just a matter of how well they are willing to cooperate with the user. Yeah I'm starting to think it's more of a pain than its worth, I guess it's only a pain when the operator is an idiot like me.

Don't worry. I'm a computer dummy too.

Push Control + Alt + Delete buttons simultaneously just once and it'll show you a list of what's running in the background. From there you can highlight a program and select "End Task" to turn it off. Defragging and ScanDisk run much faster if you turn off everything but Explorer. Push Control + Alt + Del twice and you get a blue screen and have to reboot.

We need a photoshopped picture of this with a computer.

Quoted: Quoted: The blinking light and the clicking is the computer accessing the hard drive. Make sure you don't have a whole lot of crap running in the background and, as mentioned, defrag the drive. I'll defrag shortly, but how do I know what is running in the 'background'?? And how should I turn it off if possible???

While taking into account what Troy said, if you run msconfig and click on the startup tab you will see all of the programs that are loading whenever you startup your machine. You can use this to turn off any programs that you don't want or that don't give you the option of not coming on at startup.