cidaemon.exe problem?

[duecekd]

Hey to all! I have recently come up with a problem on my XP Pro machine. I am having problems with slow response and lock ups. I keep the machine as clean as I can, and have no viruses I can find (scanned daily w/AVG) I use Ad-Aware SE Plus often. I clean the registry at boot up. Enough of all that!

I have been noticing that my HDD is running almost all the time, even when the machine is totally idle. I have found that the process cidaemon.exe is running alot, and at 80-100% cpu. I have found out that this is an "indexing service", supposedly designed to speed up file searchs. I think I have narrowed it down to this process by pausing it in management services, and of course the drive and cpu idle up.

My question to those with more knowledge than I is, can I just stop this process and live with longer file searches, or am I asking for more trouble? I have looked for as much info as I can find, and some say this is a vital process for windows to function properly.

Any thoughts on this would be a great help!

My system is:

AMD Athalon XP 2000+

Soyo KT333 M/B

512 Ram

ATI "All in Wonder" 128 Pro

Creative Audigy Sound

[nitroshift]

You answered your problem yourself: it will take longer to search for files. Period. No trouble.

[duecekd]

Thanks Nitro. I give it a whirl and hope for the best.

[JC in SE Wisc.]

I once had the same problem, though I'm not sure it was cidaemon, after I installed TurboTax. It installed a DRM called C-Dilla, which was swallowing about 3/4 of my DSL connection and slowing my machine considerably.

I'd check my windows and system32 directories for foreign programs. Viral processes can be masked from the process view. If all else fails, reinstall, though that's a last resort.