I use Windows 7 x86 for quite some time.

I noticed one thing: sometimes is just starting to access the HDD for minutes, slowing down other disk operations.

It's not a virus. It's not a hardware problem.

I deactivated Restore, Superfetch, Indexing, Windows defender (the scheduled scan) and Scheduled defragmentation.

I installed clean, without other programs.

Still no change...

On the same computer I have another partition with Windows XP x86. Each primary partition is hidden when the computer is booting from the other one.

In Windows XP I don't have this problem, even with installed programs.

I saw it happening on other computers too. In Vista is worst...

Does anybody has an idea which service/process from Windows 7 is doing this, why and how to stop it (safely)...?

I haven't seen that kind of problem on any computer so far, and I don't go disabling services like that either. Try running the performance monitor (search for it in the start menu, or run %windir%\system32\perfmon.exe /res directly). Go to the disk tab, and see which process is hitting the disk so hard. You could also do this using performance counters.

Or you could try with procmon.

Thank you.

Ok, but what should I look for? Faster read, faster write or something else..?

2 screenshots:

Edited March 19, 201115 yr by JohnMirror

Wouldn't Task Manager (once enabled the I/O and Byte read/write columns) be simpler?

jaclaz

Ok, Task Manager

As long as you don't need to know files or file types, yes, task manager is easier. Resmon is good if you need a bit more detail, and if you need process and file / registry information, you use procmon.