Hi I have been noticing that my fan has been working a lot then I NOTICED that my harddrive light is on quite a bit.  I noticed that the CPU usage sometimes hovers between 40% and 60%.  I deleted my Norton System Works and that did not take care of it.  My computer also takes about 20 minutes to boot up.  I have a HP zd7000 running Win XP Home 2002 w service pack 2.  I don't know much about computers just adding and deleting programs, web, chat, etc.  Any ideas as to what is causing this? My computer runs fine after awhile even though the harddrive light will come on and the fan will be at its highest level for hours at a time.  It's not hindering my ability to surf the web or use any of the other programs on the computer.  Let me know anybody has any suggestions.  Thanks, Bob G

PS the only software I've loaded is Iomega back up pro and I tunes.The first thing i would do is run the regular maintenence on that machine...In My Computer right click on C: and select Properties. In the first screen click Disk Cleanup.
Next from the same page select TOOLS on top and run disk DEFRAGMENTER and also Error checking...
These will take awhile so grab a coffee and a magazine.

Re-boot and see if the symptoms persist.

If they do run all your protection programs as well and report back.P.S. I just noticed the Iomega entry...are you running a TAPE drive or a Zip drive on that machine ? ?Hi my Omega drive is an external harddrive,  I think it's a 40 Gig.  I did the defrag and checked for errors and I'm still having spurts where the harddrive is contunually working.  I will wait to see if the PROBLEM is decreased at all over the weekend.  If it persists I'm going to wipe it out and start over.  If it still persists after that I'm taking it out back and give it the Office Space treatment.  Thanks for the help. BobAre these symptoms present if the external is removed from the system ? ?

If so DLoad and run the diagnostics from the manuf. site on the internal HDD with the external un-installed.

That HDD may be getting ready to go South for the Winter...