norton disk doctor free download windows 8

#Norton disk doctor free download windows 8 software#

In the example above, I’ve made the window wider (by clicking and dragging its right edge), and made the “Path” column wider (by clicking and dragging its header’s right-hand divider). This gives you a report of the file I/O activity (input/output operations) within the recorded data. Summarize the resultsĬlick the Tools menu and then the File Summary… item.

#Norton disk doctor free download windows 8 software#

In other words, it’s probably just the security software scanning files on my hard disk. In the example above, it’s all about “MsMpEng.exe” (Microsoft Malware Protection Engine), which is a component of Windows Security. You can scroll up and down this list to see what programs are accessing your disk(s), and what files they’re reading or writing to. The list of events is filtered to show only disk activity. Process Monitor showing only File System events. Since all five are selected by default, click on the other filter buttons until only File System activity remains selected. The one we care about for our purposes here is “File System activity” because we want to know what’s hitting the disk so hard. (Screenshot: )Įach button enables the display of a class of Process Monitor events. One of the simplest is right on the toolbar. Process Monitor has several ways to filter the results down to only the things you care about. If you like, you can scroll through the events to see what’s happening, but I have two better solutions. Let Process Monitor run.Īs soon as you hear or see your hard disk thrashing when you think it shouldn’t be, let it run for a few more seconds and then press CTRL+E in Process Monitor to stop the capture. (Screenshot: )Īs long as the disk isn’t thrashing (it’s possible that it’s not even being hit at this point), it’s all quite normal. By default, it monitors a lot, and will probably surprise you with all the items scrolling by at a fast clip. When you run Process Monitor, it’ll start recording things and displaying them in its windows. Process Monitor will start monitoring processes. You may also be prompted with a “Process monitor filter” dialog saying you had filters on the last time you ran it. Since there are several Sysinternals tools, you’ll need to scroll down to locate Process Monitor. Running ProcmonĪfter installing the Sysinternals Suite, you’ll find Process Monitor in your “All apps” Start Menu. It’s that last feature we’ll focus on here. Summarizing the event data in useful ways.Allowing you to examine the individual events.Collecting data called “events” 1 while your system runs, presumably while you’re experiencing whatever you’re attempting to understand.(Don’t confuse it with Process Explorer, a different tool in the suite I often recommend as well.) It’s a very sophisticated system monitoring tool that works by: Process Monitor, or simply Procmon, is a free tool included in the Windows SysInternals Suite from Microsoft. With that information in hand, you can decide if the program(s) are expected or if you need to take action. Using a free Windows Sysinternals Suite tool called Process Monitor, you can examine exactly what programs are accessing your disk and what files they’re reading and writing.