I’m a Mac guy, so I apologize that I don’t know more about my PC. My wife and kids use it, while I use my MacBook Pro from work.
My PC never stops unless we turn it off. The HD is constantly spinning. The fans never stop. I put it in hibernation, and it might shut off for 30 seconds, but it always starts back up. The screen saver turns on rarely, but only for a few seconds, and then back to the desktop. The monitor is supposed to shut off after 15 minutes, the HD after 1 hour, and the computer to standby after 20 minutes. Never happens.
There are no active programs running, and I don’t know much about processes. I look at them, and there doesn’t seem to be anything taking up any CPU. The system tray has various programs (how do I turn some off permanently?). They are Skype, SpyBOT, Windows Live OneCare, and some other camera and sound programs that don’t seem active.
But even if I exit out of all those programs, my computer still acts the same. It just never takes a break unless we shut it down. I’m not opposed to shutting it down, but sometimes we like to leave it on so my FIL can call us on Skype, or unless we’re waiting for an email.
My guess would be some security software is running and checking the hard drive regularly. I had a copy of Norton that used to do that.
As far as turning things off, you can try going to the start menu, clicking on run and type msconfig. This will show you a bunch of things that are loaded at start up. (Look at the start up tab.)
You might want to check out this site re applications running at startup, whether they are actually required, etc and checking whether there are any malicious processes.
As you have Spybot Search & Destroy installed, use the startup programs tool in the advanced mode to stop anything you don’t actually need from autostarting on boot. You may eliminate the problem program from there.
Thanks for the help. I’ll try these suggestions out when I get back from work later today. There seems to be a lot more maintanance on a PC then a Mac. Not bashing, it’s just that I don’t know how to take care of my PC.
Again, thanks.