desktop hanging up with HDD light on

[trulydog]

My desktop will hang up (cursor moves but can’t close out of anything, can’t switch windows, can’t start an app, etc.) for about 30-45 secs with the hard disc running. Does this multiple times per session but doesn’t seem to be related to any operation in particular.
Any suggestions for possible repairs?

[Bruce]

start Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and see click on the Memory column to sort descending and see what are the worst culprits, then repeat for the Memory column.

if it’s a background task causing this, rebooting the PC into Safe Mode will prove it as no background processes are started.

[trulydog]

Thanks for the reply. I did see in Task Manager that Firefox (the browser I use) would use ~400Mb memory until the HDD light came on. Memory use would jump to ~800Mb and HDD use would jump to 100%. and it would stay that way for 30-45 secs, then drop back down again. Something else I noticed was that there is ~ 10 processes, also called Firefox under the top Firefox process; not sure if this is normal. When I started in diagnostic mode my computer didn’t lock up but I didn’t have web access, of course. This seems to indicate that it is something to do with Firefox. Think I should uninstall it and try another browser?

[Bruce]

if it doesn’t happen in Safe Mode, chances are good it is a background task.
look in Task Manager for anything not required and disable it.
also go to Start > Run, type msconfig, hit Enter and go to the Services tab.
tick the box to hide all MS services.
then go through the list and untick anything not required.

in Task Manager, Startup tab, see what can be disabled there as well.

I have 9 sub-processors hanging under the main Firefox service, so yours is normal.

you could also try creating another login account and log in under that new profile and see how things go.

[Rustys]

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