Random lock ups in Windows, please help.

[ninjaarashi]

Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 2
Pentium 4 3GHZ
1GHZ 667 DDR2
Intel D946GZIS Motherboard


While using any program my computer will randomly load from the hard drive which can at times cause the entire PC to lock up. I've even encountered this happening when nothing is running, though the PC doesn't seem to lock up in these instances. I've had the Task Manager open when this happens and the Total CPU Usage percentage doesn't peak, nor does the CPU Usage of any program. Things stay the same. Depending on the memory usage of the program though, the loading is sometimes worse.

What happens exactly is it sounds like my hard drive is loading something BIG and spins up audibly shortly before my PC completely locks up for anywhere between 10 seconds to almost a minute.

Anyone I've talked to about this issue has told me to do a number of things but none of which help nor explain the issue at all.

[patio]

DLoad and run the HDD diagnostics from the manuf. site...

[Calum]

Check your virtual memory settings (paging file).
What protection do you have?
Does this still happen in safe mode?
When did this start, and what happened before it started?

[ninjaarashi]

patio: I'll try that, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the drives, they are both newly formatted and one of them is very new.

Calum: Where would I need to look to locate the Virtual Memory settings? By protection, I assume you mean Firewall and Virus Protection? I'm using Sygate Personal Firewall and AVG Free Edition. Both are updated and AVG scans my PC everyday. I have not attempted to run the PC in safe mode so I am not sure, I will attempt this and post where it happens or not shortly. As for when it started, it's been happening since day one, before this I was using an entirely different PC setup.

EDIT I ran the PC in Safe Mode, but since I'm not able to run any system hoggin programs I wasn't ab;e to test whether or not the issue persisted.

[Calum]

Virtual memory settings are under Control Panel --> System --> Advanced --> first setting button.
What is the page file set as?
Also, use Disk Defragmenter to defrag, see what it's like after that.
By protection, I did mean virus and spyware protection and the firewall.
Do you have any spyware protection?

I'm not able to run any system hoggin programs

What do you mean by this?
Did the PC still sound like it was loading things from the HDD?