HDD pegged at 100%, tried everything

[Midnight Son]

Five year old HP desktop, no recent changes, memory typically showing 20-30%, CPU usage 2%, 800Gb free on 1Tb drive. HDD is suddenly running 100% all the time, can barely do anything, I have disabled all services, Windows Search, and Superfetch in addition to malware and virus scans; nothing helped. Chrome and Skype not installed. About once every minute or two the usage will drop a few percent and let me launch or do something with constant freezes. Help please!

 

[Ian]

Welcome to the forums .

If you load "Resource Monitor" (you can search for it from the start menu), you should be able to click the "Disk" tab and sort by "Total B/sec". If you could let us know what the standout entries are (or ideally take a screenshot) then we may be able to spot a problem. Please expand all 3 options on the Disk page (Processes with disk activity, Disk Activity and Storage), as that will give us some extra detail .

 

[Midnight Son]

Welcome to the forums .

If you load "Resource Monitor" (you can search for it from the start menu), you should be able to click the "Disk" tab and sort by "Total B/sec". If you could let us know what the standout entries are (or ideally take a screenshot) then we may be able to spot a problem. Please expand all 3 options on the Disk page (Processes with disk activity, Disk Activity and Storage), as that will give us some extra detail .

Thank you for your response. It's difficult to reply as I have to wait sometimes several minutes for the usage to dip a little and let me write or paste something (this took me about 40 minutes). I've attached a screenshot; best I can do; whatever else you need let me know.

 

[Ian]

As that screenshot wasn't taken at the time of the problem, I can't be certain that those two initial processes are the culprits - but it's a good start . I don't like the look of dllhost.exe and wonder if you've got some sort of malware. When you ran the scans, were MBAM and Avira fully up-to-date?

What I would suggest doing first of all is see if your computer works ok in safe mode:

https://www.windows10forums.com/articles/safe-mode.3/

Try "enable safe mode with networking" from that article, then if that does the same thing, try "enable safe mode" (your internet won't work in the latter).

You can try posting FRST logs too (http://www.techspot.com/downloads/6731-farbar-recovery-scan-tool.html) if you're able to use the computer properly in safe mode.

I would also try running SFC (using this guide: https://www.windows10forums.com/articles/how-to-use-sfc-scannow.12/) to see if that helps. I would only run this if you can get in to safe mode successfully, as it will take an age otherwise.

Have you got backups of all your data? I would make this an absolute priority, just in case you need to take more drastic action.

 

[Saltgrass]

A system will run with heavy disk activity at certain times, but should calm down after a while. If am anti-virus is scanning, depending on the type of scan and whether you have excluded certain folders from that check, it may take quite a while.

Let's take your attachment. You show a dllhost.exe reading and writing heavily. You can put a check mark in the box for that process and see what is involved in the lower windows. It will also highlight that process in the graphs.

 

[Midnight Son]

Thank you; I will try these things and get back to you.