100% Disk usage persists

[Wrinklysteve]

Hi folks. I am a learner and struggling with what seems to be a common problem, the fact that in the Task manager Disk usage leaps up to 100%, and stays there for minutes with nothing in the column showing above 0.1MB/s. I have visited many forums and tried many fixes but have not cured the problem. The machine is am HP G62 laptop with an i3 processor and 3GB of RAM, which should cope, shouldn't it? Currently CPU 1%, memory 42%, Disk 100% - trying to install a program. I'm sure there's help out there, but please make it simple! Oh, I should have mentioned this is a new install of Windows 10.
Wrinklysteve

 

[Trouble]

Try clean booting the system and see if that produces any relief. Run it like that for a day or two and check Windows Update manually in the interim to make sure everything is up to date.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135
Use the steps for Windows 8 / 8.1 (same for Windows 10)
Easily done and easily undone.
You're basically just disabling all Startup Items and all non-Microsoft services. Do no mess with the Microsoft services. Be sure to check the box to hide them before proceeding.

 

[Wrinklysteve]

Thank you, Trouble. I have carried this out and the results still puzzle me. After a clean boot and experimenting with a/v on and off and running malwarebytes scan which sent the disk usage up to 100%, I stopped B.I.T.S. in Local Services as suggested in another forum. Ran Chrome, disk use went up to 100% when I ran a video clip. Disk usage remained at 100% for several minutes, the only usage being System and Compressed memory which changed colour as the percentage changed.
I have since run pages in Chrome with no 100% incidents. By contrast I just changed pages, got 100% instantly which remained for half a minute, then went down, oscillated between 100% and lower, has now settled down to zero. The only item to go yellow and orange was System and Compressed memory.
Sorry this is garbled, I'm trying to explain what I see.
Does it make any sense to you?

 

[Wrinklysteve]

Does this help? Leaving the computer at rest, kept an eye on the Task Manager. Disk usage at zero for a long while then zoom, up to 100%. Only processes that seem to be active are Host Process for Windows Tasks and Windows Session Manager. The latest 100% event involved System and Compressed Memory.

 

[Saltgrass]

Something else you can do it open the Resource Monitor. It is available at the bottom of the Performance tab in Task Manager or you can type resmon.exe in a run box.

From there you can go to the Disk tab and see where the activity is. If you check one of the boxes on the left, it will filter for that process and give more detailed information in the other windows.

 

[Wrinklysteve]

Many thanks. I can see more or less what it is measuring but I don't know what to look for as an indication of malfunction. The disk usage hovers in low numbers for a while then goes up in stages to 100%, stays there for a while and goes back down again, Is Hard Fault/sec relevant? It's hovering around the 60 mark. Interestingly, I closed Chrome and it dropped to 30.

 

[Trouble]

It is not all that unusual to see disk and CPU usage on a Windows 10 machine bounce up and down from some impressive usage to very low or nil again and often, especially when idle even.
There are a multitude of background tasks that happen with Windows 10 and many are triggered to run when the machine is idle.
BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Services) is a key component of the Windows Update service, also a task that runs at startup or sometimes after idle, you should probably leave that alone if you want Windows Updates to run and function properly.

I have a brand new clean install of Windows 10 on a spare machine with some pretty formidable hardware. There is nothing on it except Windows 10 no other programs or services except those native to a typical install.
It is setting here beside me and I'm currently watching Task Manager and the disk and cpu usage is doing exactly the same thing bouncing up and down. Currently involving "Antimalware service executable"

Selecting Resource Monitor "Disk tab" and expanding Disk Activity and then clicking the column header for "Read (B/sec)" to sort will or should reveal what is going on with your disk.
Likewise using the CPU and or Memory tabs can also help you see what's going on.

Personally, I wouldn't worry to much about it, unless it never subsides and results in your computer being unusable.
In my personal experience this will generally all concludes after some minutes, frequent 5 or 10 worse case maybe 20. Just make sure that you are not worrying about things that are suppose to be happening......
Windows Update, disk optimizing and defrag, malware scanning, etc.

 

[Wrinklysteve]

Thank you for your helpful comment. I'm not worried that the disk should be worked so hard, but by the fact that there are quite long periods when everything is stuck waiting for whatever is causing the overwork to stop.
Last question, if I download a disk checking tool from WD, does running the test affect the software on the disk? A silly question but I'm a learner.

 

[Trouble]

if I download a disk checking tool from WD, does running the test affect the software on the disk?

It shouldn't impact the data on the disk, but....
I would still take steps to secure my critical data by backing it up to external storage as well as creating a disk image just in case.

 

[Saltgrass]

Be careful with such tests, some of them do require wiping the drive.

The attachment below shows some of my processes. If the drive is running at 100% you should be able to tell what is running it. Use the Filter option to drill down to the exact process.

You did not mention your system was having to wait... If you can pin down the process we may be able to at least change the priority on that process.

 

[ram1220]

Are you using Avast? The high CPU and computer resource usage is one reason I stopped using Avast. It calls home too often as well as using Google analytics to send information to Google. Once I uninstalled Avast my high usage stopped. As for the question about downloading a disk checker from WD. The ones WD uses are fine. They will not delete your information.