Disk usage 100% Win10 solved!

[cam w]

Hey all, maybe this might help some of you out if you haven't come across it already.

HP-Slimeline-AMD-A8-Series-4 Gigs ram-1 TB Hdd-Win 10 home

Got it this morning and it was just bought new three months ago from Best Buy.
It was working fine until it slowed down to a crawl last night.

Task manager showing disk usage at 100% so after a little research with my pal Google
it seems to be common with Win8 and Win10. Out of a few fixes that were suggested I
chose reset virtual memory first. It was set for automatically manage paging file size for all drives.

I disabled that and set a custom size and that took care of the problem! Running like new again!

P.S. Of course I did my Virus/Malware routine!

 

[Encrypted Existence]

lol @ slimeline - glad you got it sorted

 

[sapphirescales]

This problem is TERRIBLE and affects almost ALL computers with hard drives and Windows 10. There's no "fix" that works 100% of the time. I have a huge list of like 8 things that I have to go down with every Windows 10 system that comes across my bench with a hard drive. This is one of the main reasons I recommend an SSD upgrade to EVERY client that walks through the door. I don't personally sell any computers with Windows 10 and a hard drive. If it has a hard drive, it gets Windows 7. No exceptions.

 

[Altster]

I disabled that and set a custom size and that took care of the problem! Running like new again!

Well good for you! I'm currently loading Winblows 10 Pro-x64 on a Fujitsu T732 laptop / tablet. Will be fun to see how it works once it is all done.

 

[cam w]

lol @ slimeline - glad you got it sorted

Yes I know, lol. I was going to mention that. It's a cute lil thing though!

 

[cam w]

I'm currently loading Winblows

hahaha...

 

[Your PCMD]

I'm with @sapphirescales on this. SSD and done. I've converted so many desktops and laptops over to SSD that I lost count. On the plus side, after a complete 3 pass sector wipe, I have numerous hard drives that I can sell (as is, used) or throw them in one of my many servers to tinker around with with no out of pocket expense.

 

[cypress]

This issue can be a real PITA. I was still battling this issue even after a fresh install of Windows 10 on a Samsung SSD. I disabled Windows Superfetch and Windows Search in the services and that fixes the issues with the machines that have this problem.

 

[stro]

I am running this cmd script on every Windows 10 machine I touch now.

@echo off
:: BatchGotAdmin (Run as Admin code starts)

REM --> Check for permissions
>nul 2>&1 "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\cacls.exe" "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\config\system"

REM --> If error flag set, we do not have admin.
if '%errorlevel%' NEQ '0' (
echo Requesting administrative privileges...
goto UACPrompt
) else ( goto gotAdmin )

:UACPrompt
echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
echo UAC.ShellExecute "%~s0", "", "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"

"%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
exit /B

:gotAdmin
if exist "%temp%\getadmin.vbs" ( del "%temp%\getadmin.vbs" )
pushd "%CD%"
CD /D "%~dp0"

:: BatchGotAdmin (Run as Admin code ends)
:: Your codes should start from the following line


net stop superfetch
REG add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\SysMain" /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 4 /f

net stop "Windows search"
REG add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\WSearch" /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 4 /f

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start explorer.exe

 

[mr m]

I'm glad I read all these posts. I just cleaned up a W10 laptop laden with malware and it still shows 100% disk usage.

I'll try the OP and cypress' fix before Googling.

 

[cam w]

I'm glad I read all these posts. I just cleaned up a W10 laptop laden with malware and it still shows 100% disk usage.

I'll try the OP and cypress' fix before Googling.

Good luck! Let us know how you make out please!

 

[Montrose Computers]

I am running this cmd script on every Windows 10 machine I touch now.

This looks great!! Thank you!!

 

[GTP]

@stro is it ok to save and use this script?
TIA

 

[stro]

@stro is it ok to save and use this script?
TIA

Sure thing.

The script to elevate to administrative privileges came from here:

https://sites.google.com/site/eneerge/scripts/batchgotadmin

I run a combination of these plus ninite installers on my reloads to save time....

You can add:

This to kill Cortana and the search box:

REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search" /v "SearchboxTaskbarMode" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f
REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /v "ShowTaskViewButton" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search" /v "AllowCortana" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f

This to put the text labels on the taskbar running programs. (Seniors like this)

REG ADD "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" /V TaskbarGlomLevel /T REG_DWORD /D 1 /F

Get rid of One Drive:

taskkill /f /im OneDrive.exe
%SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\OneDriveSetup.exe /uninstall

Set the timezone (Insert your own timezone):

tzutil /s "Eastern Standard Time"

 

[GTP]

Thanks, I have several scripts to do this separately but good to have them combined.

 

[fencepost]

You can also run Resource Monitor and if you look at the Disk tab you can see which processes and files have the highest total throughput.

 

[mr m]

Good luck! Let us know how you make out please!

This was weird. I verified 100% disk usage with Task Manager. The PC was loaded with crapware so I initially felt that was the cause. After the malware cleanup I still saw 100% usage.That is when I decided to bring it back to my bench. The initial call was no Yahoo mail access. Win 10, x64, 4GB, 500 GB HDD, bottom line Toshiba laptop.

I tried disabling the services mentioned here one at a time to no avail. I tried customizing the page file as the OP suggested. No go. Then Googled for a bit and then looked at many suggestions like Skype and Google prefetch. Still nothing. I removed the drive and tested with SeaTools and HDD Scan.

Woke up today and disk activity is normal for the last hour. WTF! Rebooted, after it completed its housekeeping, the high disk activity ceased. Rebooted again. Disk activity is still normal within a few of minutes after booting!

The issue seemed to resolve itself! I wish I knew how to embed the Twilight Zone theme in this post.

 

[cam w]

I'm glad it's resolved! Hopefully it stays that way!

 

[fencepost]

One thing to keep in mind is that if the system gets backed up (high disk queue) it may just stay that way for quite a while - disk queue slows down everything, including paging if the system is short on memory, so the queue never drops.

 

[sapphirescales]

One thing to keep in mind is that if the system gets backed up (high disk queue) it may just stay that way for quite a while - disk queue slows down everything, including paging if the system is short on memory, so the queue never drops.

The problem is on systems with this problem that have Windows 10 installed, it can take 20-30 minutes after startup for the disk usage to go down! If you look in the task manager, a meager 5MB/s of I/O can cause 100% disk usage. Even after disk usage goes down half an hour after booting, opening Chrome with 1 tab can cause disk usage to hover between 80 and 90%. This is a MAJOR problem with Windows 10. Microsoft claims that it's a problem with the storachi driver, but even after applying their "fix" it still happens 90% of the time:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...00-disk-utilization-on-windows-10-devices-wit

It's BS and I'm just waiting for Microsoft to fix it. Seeing as the issue has existed for over a year now, I'm not holding my breath. The problem didn't exist when Windows 10 first came out and I didn't start seeing it until around Mid-2016. At first I thought that I was doing something wrong, so I bought a brand new HP laptop with Windows 10 and a hard drive with an i7 processor and it has the exact same problem.

So far the ONLY thing that fixes this is installing an SSD. Honestly though, if you compare a Dell business class laptop with a hard drive and Windows 7 to the exact same laptop with Windows 10 and an SSD, the performance gains are underwhelming once the system has started up. Install Windows 10 on that same laptop with a hard drive though and it's slow as molasses.