Disk Hitting 100% / Causing Problems

[sparkraid]

Recently, I've had an issue where my computer repeatedly reaches 100% on the disk repeatedly. The first few times it happened, it went completely unresponsive for an extended amount of time. I ended up running a repair startup, which helped a bit, but didn't completely solve the issue. I messed with disabling superfetch and a few other programs, but nothing has worked so far. I ran into another issue where I couldn't upload images through Chrome--my disk would reach 100 and close Chrome.

I ran an sfc scan, but now Chrome won't open at all, and I can't open many other apps, even Uninstall, without receiving an error message along the lines of 'The program can't start because... C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595... etc...' Try to open my antivirus gives the same message.

I also can't perform a system restore or reset (while keeping all files).

Any hope of resolving this WITHOUT losing my files? Could it be the result of a virus? Prior to the problem, I stumbled upon one of those clearly baited websites by mistake, but I exited immediately and didn't touch anything on the page. Any help is appreciated.

 

[Tim Locke]

It could be a virus or some other malware. Can you run Task manager? If you could run it and post pics of the 2 or 3 screens under Processes that might give a clue as a starting point.

Are you using a 2nd working machine to send us the message above?

To preserve your data, ideally you'd access the disk without running anything from it. A good way to do this is to boot from a thumb drive with an uptodate Linux distro on it...not to install Linux but they all run just from the boot device. You'd be able to copy your data files to a 2nd thumb drive ideally. Once the data is safe then you can just reste or reload the machine.

 

[sparkraid]

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Yes! I'm using a spare laptop to post here. I'm able to run the task manager and also the resource monitor, but I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough to know what exactly to look for (sorry for the mobile photo!).

It seems like svchost is what runs to the top each time my disk spikes, along with backgroundtaskhost. It doesn't seem like anything in my task manager is taking up more than 0.1 MB/s, so I haven't posted images of those processes just yet. Anything standing out?

 

[Tim Locke]

You need to scroll down and snip and post again to get the rest of that display ( the left half of your picture)

 

[sparkraid]

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Well, I didn't see your reply until a little while ago any by that point I think I dug myself a little deeper. Yikes.
I tried again to perform a reset on this computer because I'm pretty impatient. It failed the first time, but I tried again and it failed a second time. When I booted after this, no operating system was found. I haven't got a clue of what to do next... Tried to put Windows on a USB and install from there, but I ran into other problems (as expected).

 

[Trouble]

Any hope of resolving this WITHOUT losing my files?

Hopefully that ship hasn't already sailed yet....
To secure your data that you need that is still on the drive in the computer, you're going to need to copy it off to an external resource.
In order to do that, you have two options....
1. Remove the drive and attach it to a second, functioning system
OR
2. Boot to bootable media and copy it off to an external resource.
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
OR
https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=205
OR
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench

All three of which support booting from an optical drive or a USB ThumbDrive