Computer "Thinking, with nothing happening

Hey all,
If I leave my computer on and walk away, it will start thinking and make the usual grinding noise, even though nothing is on and nothing is running in the background. It didn't used to do this, and it's very annoying.
I'm using windows xp with a gateway if it helps.
(Tried to google it, nothing came up that I could find.)
Thank you!

 

Even when you are not doing anything on your PC, stuff is running in the background. There are services running all the time, I cant get technical as I dont understand 90% of it myself. If you press CTRL+ALT+DEL at the same time then click on the proccesses tab you will see them all in a list. Also it will show how much memory they are using.

Also if you have AntiVirus, AntiSpyware and Firewalls running. They will more than likely be active at all times. Plus you may have a realtime defragment program like IObit or Diskeeper which will be working away.

Overall unless your PC is having problems I would not worry about it. Unless your HDD is making really unusual noise`s! Then Id post in hardware with that issue, as it may be your HDD is on its way to hardware heaven!

Hope this helps.

 

Well, that does put my mind at ease. I have a firewall, and antivirus on at all times, so that might be it. And I know about things running in the background with ctr-alt-dlt, and regularly clean that up in msconfig.
I hope it's not the harddrive dieing! It's only 6 months old!

Thank you for you time!