I HAVE FOUND THE ACTUAL CAUSE! I am positive this is what has been causing the intense disk activity on my IBM laptop with Vista Business with SP1 and on my desktop with Vista Home Premium with SP1. It is task scheduler but more specifically it is System Restore. Go to your start meu, all programs, accessories, system tools, and then task scheduler. In task scheduler drop down task scheduler library, microsoft, windows, system restore. Now from here check the "triggers". It is scheduled to run on every system startup and every day at 12:00 am. Then check "conditions" and you'll see task scheduler will queue the system restore task on these triggers to run once the computer has been idle for 10 minutes. This is the cause, it's your choice how you want to change this from happening. You can turn system restore off, you can just delete this task completely and run system restore manually, or (I haven't tried this yet though so I don't know how well this will work but) within the task if you double click on the task "SR" you will get a new window, go to conditions, and under where it says "Start the task only if the computer is idle for:" there is a check box that says "Stop if the computer ceases to be idle". Check this box and the hard drive activity should stop if you start working on your computer again. Or you can just delete one of the triggers or you can change the idle time to longer than 10 minutes. Please post and let me know if that fixes your excessive hard drive access issue.
