Quieting Windows 7 down....

Uranus said:

7 is constantly optimizing, caching, defraging etc while it is idle. one of the reasons why it is so fast.

I understand that. However it's so busy at this that my two main computers --one of which is on 24/7-- didn't go into standby for nearly 2 weeks and did so only after I intervened by shutting some stuff down. That's a bit over the top and, quite frankly, it's unhealthy for the system.

Back in the Win2000 days, when you could still call Microsoft and get actual information, one of their software people told me that the configurations of Windows they distribute are set up for 2 things: To install correctly and to run on almost any computer. "Anything beyond that", I was told, "is what settings are for." There is a reason we have access to all these configuration items and that's because there is no one universal setup that works for everyone.

you can check Task Scheduler. in mine there are 32 active tasks. there is lots of tasks with self explanatory names like ScheduledDefrag, Consolidator, DiskDiagnostics, RegIdleBackup...

Uranus said:

you can check Task Scheduler. in mine there are 32 active tasks. there is lots of tasks with self explanatory names like ScheduledDefrag, Consolidator, DiskDiagnostics, RegIdleBackup...

Yep... I saw that. Sure ain't the scheduler I've been used to. I'll probably go through that and Services and see what I can live without...

I did notice the spyware in there... about consolidating and sending User Experience information to Microsoft... now you KNOW that's going to bite it.



Had a bizarre moment this morning... I've been having this problem with the drive LED constantly flashing on my desktop system (which is why I started this thread)... So I checked it this morning... the drive was spun down with the LED flashing once a second... absolutely freaky.

CommonTater said:

Yep... I saw that. Sure ain't the scheduler I've been used to. I'll probably go through that and Services and see what I can live without...

I did notice the spyware in there... about consolidating and sending User Experience information to Microsoft... now you KNOW that's going to bite it.

i did notice it too. but i think it's disabled by default.

Had a bizarre moment this morning... I've been having this problem with the drive LED constantly flashing on my desktop system (which is why I started this thread)... So I checked it this morning... the drive was spun down with the LED flashing once a second... absolutely freaky.

weird...
my old CD writer, when there is no disc inside, flashes led forever. like, for years already. annoying as hell.

Uranus said:

my old CD writer, when there is no disc inside, flashes led forever. like, for years already. annoying as hell.

Actually it's the motherboard turning on the LED when the system polls the Optical Drive... but you are right, it's mighty annoying, especially when you're trying to catch a nap on the couch.

CarlTR6 said:

Had a bizarre moment this morning... I've been having this problem with the drive LED constantly flashing on my desktop system (which is why I started this thread)... So I checked it this morning... the drive was spun down with the LED flashing once a second... absolutely freaky.

Mine does that, too, both the hard drive and the DVD drive. And both are idle.

Well, the good news is that I now know it's merely annoying, not harmful. Given that, I can press forward to the other issues in taming the beast...


I fixed the ultra brite leds problem too... cut the positive wire, insert 1000 ohm resistor, a couple of drops of solder and some heat shrink tubing and voila... nice soft glow instead of a glaring bat-signal on the far wall. Holy luminous overkill, batman!

CommonTater said:

Actually it's the motherboard turning on the LED when the system polls the Optical Drive... but you are right, it's mighty annoying, especially when you're trying to catch a nap on the couch.

the funny thing is that this specific drive did/doing that on completely different motherboards in my upgrade chain (580VPX, 440BX, nForce3 and now 785G chipsets). many DVD drives that i changed over the years didn't have annoying led flash.

CommonTater said:

I fixed the ultra brite leds problem too... cut the positive wire, insert 1000 ohm resistor, a couple of drops of solder and some heat shrink tubing and voila... nice soft glow instead of a glaring bat-signal on the far wall. Holy luminous overkill, batman!

my case got ultra bright blue power led. so bright that it even casts shadows. very handy for my bathroom trip at night. no need to turn on the lights xD

Uranus said:

the funny thing is that this specific drive did/doing that on completely different motherboards in my upgrade chain (580VPX, 440BX, nForce3 and now 785G chipsets). many DVD drives that i changed over the years didn't have annoying led flash.

Yeah I know... I'm still trying to make sense of it...

my case got ultra bright blue power led. so bright that it even casts shadows. very handy for my bathroom trip at night. no need to turn on the lights xD

Oh gees, don't even get me started on the "whatever happened to quality" rant...

The resistor trick does work... total cost 5 cents.

I was poking around in Admin tools -> Performance monitor (the big applet, not the one from Task Manager). Under EVENT TRACE SESSIONS I have a bunch of them enabled/running by default (I didn't change anything). IOW, all that are listed are "running".

NTFSLOG is one that's running. However, the directory that it stores these "logs" is empty so maybe it's not really running. I'm tempted to turn NTFSLOG and see if my $MFT and $LOGFILE writes stop.

Will research more tomorrow when I'm awake.