Windows 7: hard drive running constantly

Hello,
I have a Dell Inspiron laptop. I was running Vista and about 2 weeks ago I decided to upgrade to Windows 7. After the upgrade, things worked beautifully, but a few days ago my hard drive began running constantly and still is. Whether I leave it alone or am working on it does not seem to matter, yet system performance seems unaffected by it.

I am a novice computer user so straight forward instructions or explanations are more than welcome.



Thanks.

It always runs when the PC is booted unless your power settings are set to turn it off after some time.

Are you sure that your hard drive wasn't constantly running with Vista?

I suspect that was the case, but you just never noticed it.

Yes, I am sure that the problem is new. Last week, my cpu usage was only about 1% when i left it idle, now when i leave it idle its about 60%. This is a new problem, I am sure of it. The fan also is running constantly when before it would only start up if I am doing cpu-intensive tasks (like playing a computer game or running multiple tasks at once).

Have you done a virus scan recently? Have you installed any application that may be running in the background? Have you checked the task manager to see what is running (right click on the task bar and select "Start the Task Manager", then look under the applications and processes tabs)?

It is probably the file indexing that is causing the hard drive noise, it will carm down after a few days.

If you find any new services running you can stop them and change their startup to manual.

Hello,
I have disabled all programs that are running in the background (including Defender and my antivirus). The issue still persists.

Also, I have checked the task manager as you suggested and the largest cpu-sucking process was my firefox browser (at 49,264 k), than was my internet explorer. I did find one process that I had no idea what it was for, it was something labeled csrss.exe, but it only consumes 1,094 k.

Thanks

If it is the indexing, how long will it take to stop? It has been three days, can it take longer than this?

That's pretty normal for Firefox. Does that much on mine and my HD is not always at full speed.