I really don't know. I have removed all drivers in vlite. i added 3 for ethernet, wifi, ati. I use kaspersky internet security 7. As you said i can confirm that my LED or light for hard drive is always ON during startup. I don't use any spyware, firewall third application. List of my sofware: VS2008, Office 2007, Tune Up, CCleaner, Firefox, Logmein, Messenger, Vista Codec Package, Winrar, EyeBeam, Virtual Clone Drive, Flashget, Adobe acrobat, Skype