W2K: why is harddisk accessed during dvd playing

[Jeff The Riffer]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:
> I'm playing movie dvds (,VOB files I think) with Matrox Cine Player on
> both a desktop and a laptop on W2K. I expected the dvd access light to
> be on most of the time and the hard disk not to be accessed at all.

Probably the DVD playback software is caching the decoded video to hard
drive, so if you want to rewind a bit it will access faster.

Alternatively, it could be swapping. Even with tons of RAM, windows will
swap.

Go download and install this free tool:

	http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html

It'll let you see exactly what is being accessed on the drives. You can
filter by process as well as by paths...

In fact, pretty much ALL of the utilities on the Sysinternals.com website
are a must have. They enable you to see deep into the innerworkings of the
Windows OS in ways you're already used to with Unix systems.

I've troubleshot many bizarre/weird issues with those tools. Also very
useful for isolating malware. If you become adept with those tools, you'll
be like a small god, :)

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