SSS mining for data?

[dahkter]

Greetings,

I was just reading LiveMusic's thread about the ATV, and I hear my hard drive spinning, as if I was trying to open a folder with 200 files and the flashlight icon pops up. Sounded like writing/access of the HD.

Is there some sort of spyware on here, does this site pull cookies off of our drive so it can market items catered to our preferences?

When I left the site (closed IE), the spinning of the HD stopped.

Anyone else experience this, is there a way to prevent this from happening?

FYI, I'm on windows XP, just installed SP2. Had a blue screen two moths ago, so did a clean reinstall and havent' gone into control panel and played around with anything (ala musicxp.net tweaks) since then...

I figure some of the computer masters on here can help me figure it out...

[Jon Gnash]

Maybe the web page needed a system font that was previously uninstalled. I think it would search through your *.CAB files and behave just as you describe. But I could be wrong.

[Jon Gnash]

How come they don

[Jon Gnash]

Originally posted by dahkter Is there some sort of spyware on here, does this site pull cookies off of our drive so it can market items catered to our preferences?

Maybe it was a malevolent Active-X control enumerating your PCI bus to find the vendor

[Anderton]

As far as I know, this site doesn't do data mining. If nothing else, the software isn't sophisticated enough...the IT folks are more concerned about things like the search function, and keeping track of many people visit the site.

 

Are you sure the disk didn't start serving as virtual memory for some reason? Big internet image cache, maybe?

[dahkter]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for the reply, where can I find this setting and what's a decent size (min/max).

I'll update it and let you know if it goes away...

Thanks

[blue2blue]

XP performs the disk operations and others in background when it "thinks" you're not likely to be using your machine. It performs some other operations more on a as-needed basis.

 

While no one should ignore the risks of malevolent takeover of his machine ("zombification"), there's probably no cause for alarm if there are no other signs of problems than some occasional disk action at odd times.

 

 

 

Many power users set their minimum and maximum virtual memory settings the same to prevent resizing. In XP, resizing seems pretty trouble-free, but in Win 98 and 95, it could lead to corruptions of virtual memory (or slowdowns) when performing certain operations (closing a bunch of open programs at once, one "on top" of another, could 'cause either a slowdown or even an OS hangup or freeze).

 

Setting VM to a fixed sized (max and min the same) is one of the typical optimizations suggested by sites like www.tweakXP.com and www.musicXP.com.

 

You can get to those settings by...

1)going to the Control Panel,

2)opening Systems,

3) click Advanced Tab,

4) in the Performance panel click the "Settings" button --

5) a second tabbed dialog will open (!) --

6) now click the Advanced Tab in THAT (!!)

7) and you will see, in the bottom panel, Virtual Memory, you will see a button marked "Change" -- click that

8)THAT will open yet a THIRD popup dialog (!!! -- but NO TABS, woo hoo!) where you will see, in the top panel a radio button option for Custom Size;

9) select that;

10) then put in the same value for minimum

11) and maximum - (I typically use the size "recommended" in the panel below... )

12) once you've entered the proper values, click the "Set" button.

 

And you're ALL DONE!

 

Wasn't THAT easy???

 

 

[rant]

 

OK... I really like XP but THAT is the kind of mindless rigamarole that Mac-evangelists VERY correctly deride MS and the Windows design team for... it's just totally freakin' absurd. Insane, even.

 

Sure, maybe you don't want Joe Sixpack mindlessly tinkering with some of his settings...

 

It would be SO MUCH more sensible, it seems to me, to make system access straightforward but to have information readily available -- hell, even a forced pop info popup -- on why you shouldn't change some settings unless you know what you're doing.

 

And, while I'm pretty adjusted to Windows now... for years it used to drive me utterly nuts chasing my way through "magic" tab interfaces, where options are deeply hidden and there's no way of knowing they are there save burrowing deep into a painfully confusing and WILDLY mismatched and inconsisten set of dialogs and pop ups.

 

Yet through ALL THE VALID CRITICISM directed at MS and Windows over the years for this kind of inanity, when it comes time to redesign things, they keep moronic crap like this but add in useless gewgaws that are clearly desperate Mac-me-tooisms, but as though designed by the Bizarro Superman... l just can't freakin' WAIT for the "advances" in Vista like the CPU-and vid-draining rescaling graphics engine, an Aqua-me-tooism that will apparently make today's generation of machines crawl... (to the extent that MS is forced to release a Vista-lite without the graphics engine and many of the other supposedly advanced features that were designed to differentiate Vista from the much-beloved XP.)

 

Sidebar to Cakewalk -- we REALLY NEED a *NIX version of Sonar!!!

 

[/rant]

[Anderton]

>

 

Reminds me of the "Build Your Own External Drive" article I wrote for EQ. The instructions for Mac formatting took a couple lines, the ones for Windows seemed to take forever.

 

I'm sure a large part of this is to prevent people from formatting disks accidentally, but still, I like your "Don't do this!!" popup concept a lot better.

[Jon Gnash]

Originally posted by dahkter ... the flashlight icon pops up. ... just installed SP2.

The OS was searching through its CAB files looking for a service pack file. A CAB file is more or less a ZIP file. When you install a service pack it is compressed into CAB files - and these CAB files only get decompressed on an as needed basis. Once the OS extracts something once it just leaves the expanded file sitting on the hard drive (because it assumes you will need to access it frequently).

 

 

Now where is my prize?

 

Didn

[the stranger]

 

Originally posted by Anderton ...but still, I like your "Don't do this!!" popup concept a lot better.

 

 

While trying to fix a buddy's system that got hit with some {censored} that was a ad/spyware/virus on Myspace (he was using an outdated version of IE), it occured to me that you would think an operating system would be smart enough to detect when radical system changes are about to be made and at least give you a prompt or dialog asking if you wish to continue.

 

Most viruses wouldn't even work if Windows would just ask when registry/etc system changes are about to occur that the user didn't specify.

 

Duh.

 

It always annoys me with all these other useless prompts, why not one that makes sense.

 

I can understand some of this, but don't you get tired of telling windows repreatedly to delete a file?

 

Are you sure you wish to send this item to the receycle bin? Yeah, I did a right click and clicked delete, right?

It's going to the recycle bin, why are you bothering me with this?

 

How about:

 

Windows is about to make critical system changes, do you wish to continue?

[MikeRivers]

I'm pretty careful about spyware, but sometimes I'll look over at the other computer (which is turned on but not connected to a network or the Internet) and see the hard disk light blinking for a few minutes. Maybe it's too stupid to know that it's not hooked up to the Net and it's trying to get the latest Windows update (nope, I have that turned off), or maybe it's setting a restore point (maybe).