Flickering HD light; erratic high CPU usage; stuttering; what is it?

HP Compaq Presario V2000 laptop running Windows XP Home SP2

Several days ago, I don't know what precipitated it, the machine started
a jerky behavior. Let's say when playing videos, the sound and pic
would momentarily stop several times a minute. The hard drive light
would light up at the same time, flickering. And it seems the CPU
usage would go to a hundred percent off and on. Because of this
hesitating, everything runs slow.

I'm running AVG free and it's up to date. I also have Windows
Defender.

I tried using CHKDSK (via device manager) and it found several
errors and fixed them. But still the problem persists.

I suspect the hard drive is failing, but I don't know how to read a SMART report. Is the HD failing? Is that the problem? Where can I learn how to understand this report?

I have Everest Home Edition. Here's the SMART report:

Device Description
TOSHIBA MK8025GAS (264D8399S)
ID Attribute Description Threshold Value Worst Data Status
01 Raw Read Error Rate 50 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
02 Throughput Performance 50 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
03 Spin Up Time 1 100 100 1385 OK: Value is normal
04 Start/Stop Count 0 100 100 1997 OK: Always passing
05 Reallocated Sector Count 50 100 100 6 OK: Value is normal
07 Seek Error Rate 50 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
08 Seek Time Performance 50 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 88 88 5195 OK: Always passing
0A Spin Retry Count 30 138 100 0 OK: Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 1909 OK: Always passing
C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 100 100 30 OK: Always passing
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 87 87 130081 OK: Always passing
C2 Temperature 0 100 100 4294639662 OK: Always passing
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100 100 6 OK: Always passing
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 19 OK: Always passing
C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 253 0 OK: Always passing
DC Disk Shift 0 100 100 8270 OK: Always passing
DE Loaded Hours 0 91 91 3750 OK: Always passing
DF Load Retry Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
E0 Load Friction 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
E2 Load-In Time 0 100 100 218 OK: Always passing
F0 Head Flying Hours 1 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal

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(||) Nehmo (||)

 

it looks like your hard drive is passing the SMART test, try scanning your computer with something other then windows defender like Lavasofts Adaware 2007 or ad aware se.

Try download the toshiba drive diagonistic
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/ebtext.to?page=360_protect

and see what it comes up with thatrs all i can offer you for support at the moment.

 

Maybe your antivirus soft do some update or,scans at the time.Try to use Task Manager to find what cause this memory drain.
Windows dfefender is known resorce hog.Try to disable him for some period of time to see the diference.Do some clean up,and in run-type msconfig,and disable some programs that you don't need at the startup.

 

There's a guy called Ron Speed, and in this thread http://snipurl.com/1o4ze he doesn't like C4 and C5 on the SMART. C5 means "Thats 19 dubious sectors" to him. I'm trying to learn about it.
I'll try AdAware, and I'm looking for the Toshiba HD test software. I can't seem to find anything on http://snipurl.com/1o4zu

 

I'm running AdAware 2007 right now. I'll see what happens, but I doubt it will catch something that Defender and AVG didn't.

The system worked fine for many months with Defender working. It's unlikely Defender is the cause of the problem. But I'll turned it off anyway just to see. I'll have to figure out which processes are part of Defender. It doesn't show on the Applications tab of Task Manager.

I know how to use Task Manager to see memory usage, but I don't know how to use it to see what's causing high CPU usage. (I suppose I could turn off one process at a time and then look at the CPU usage.) Actually, I'm not really sure my CPU usage is above normal. Right now it's hovering around 100% but I have Ad-Aware going.

If the problem is the drive beginning to fail, I'd like to make sure of that. There should be a way to do that. I'm going to read up on what all that SMART data means.

 

Ad-Aware didn't find anything critical, just some tracking cookies and most-recently-used (MRU) objects.

I don't think Toshiba has a HD diagnostic utility. The diagnostic they have seems to be for their computers. My laptop is Compaq; only the drive is Toshiba.

 

http://www.hddlife.com/

Use this.

 

HDDlife Pro Version 3.0.140 seems to say the HD is OK.

The Spin retry count has a status of 63%
value: 138, Threshold: 30, Worst: 100, Raw: 0
I'm not sure if those numbers are indicative of anything.

The temperature warning goes sounds at 45 degrees C because that's what it's set at. But the drive's specifications http://www.baber.com/drives/internal_hard_drives/laptops/toshiba_mk8025gas_specs.htm allow up to 55 degrees C. It's up to 50 degrees C now.

So I still don't see anything indicating the drive is definitely bad. However, Ron Speed, the person I mentioned from the Google Groups thread, is knowledgeable, and he doesn't like the two items I mentioned above.

I could just go on his opinion and change the drive. But I'd like to see something that definitely says the drive is bad.

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Nehmo