SOLVED Excessive HD activity

[UnclKracker]

My HD runs at or near 100% most of the time. This used to be after startup only and would settle down after 10 minutes or so. Now it's all the time. The system can be running for 24 hours and the HD is still overworked.

Does this picture of disk activity give any clues to why this is happening?

 

[UnclKracker]

Also, some weeks ago I disabled Superfetch and at first it seemed to help but eventually got worse. I re-enabled it yesterday. I haven't notice any change in performance.

 

[Saltgrass]

If you are going to use the Resource Monitor to track down what is happening, put a check mark in the highest one, System in this case, and then look in one of the lower windows to see what is happening.

Since you know it is reading something, could be Defender doing a scan or some other Windows maintenance event.

 

[bassfisher6522]

First thing I'd start looking into is Malware/Spyware/Adware and possibly a Virus or some variant of one. Maybe even a keylogger....that's found it's way on your system.

Next I'd start looking at your browsers.....as to what might found it's way on any of them that you use.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Here are 2 snap shots of mine.....

 

[UnclKracker]

If you are going to use the Resource Monitor to track down what is happening, put a check mark in the highest one, System in this case, and then look in one of the lower windows to see what is happening.

Since you know it is reading something, could be Defender doing a scan or some other Windows maintenance event.

I checked system and the filtered window is displaying hundreds of system files?

 

[Saltgrass]

To the right on your attachment, it shows disk activity. When you click the top of that column, it brings either the most or least usage to the top. Something should show with the highest disk activity or maybe ever two or three of the entries.

Since they are system activities you may not recognize what they are. If you were running a virus scan you could pick out that utility much better.

You might also check the CPU activity at the same time since it might give you a clue.

 

[UnclKracker]

I had installed Sophos Home premium a while back but hadn't really done much with it. I hadn't run the programs clean routine before so I gave it a try. No threats were found but 9 "potentially unwanted" items were discovered. Once I deleted them the HD activity dropped tremendously. Before it was taking more than 30 seconds for Chrome to load, now it's around 6 seconds. Everything I've tried so far is quicker.

Potentially unwanted items

Resource Monitor after cleaning

Don't know what was causing the problem but for now it's looking good.