Fix Windows 10 High disk usage after install Latest Windows Updates
If you notice laptop running slow, not responding after upgrade windows 10 version 2004, Task Manager shows the disk to be at 100% utilization despite a light or no workload, System may experience lag or become unresponsive at startup. Here 5 effective solutions help to fix Windows 10 100% Disk usage, Or High CPU usage problem permanently.
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windows 10 100% disk usage! But Why?
Windows 10 1809 High Disk Usage, means your computer’s hard drive is constantly working at or near 100%, it won’t have any spare capacity to perform other tasks, even routine operating system tasks. This slows everything down and can make your computer totally unresponsive.
There are several things that can cause 100% disk usage in Windows, a process or an app in Microsoft Windows forces the system to utilize the hard drive to its full capacity. It can be Chrome’s web page prefetch feature, a bug in a Windows driver or some other Windows features Cause 100% Disk usage on both solid-state drive (SSD) and hard disk drive (HDD).
Again There is a service called Superfetch and Prefetch included in Windows 10 Operating System to improve the performance of your Computer by predicting tasks that a user is likely to perform and pre-loading the required applications into memory. And Background Intelligence Transfer Service (BITS uses idle bandwidth on your computer to check and download updates to Windows programs. But if due to any reason these services get stuck processing result high system resource usage, 100% Disk usage problem. And sometimes Hardware problems, or Bug cause 100% Disk usage problem. some Advanced Host Controller Interface PCI-Express(AHCI PCIe) models that causes these symptoms in Windows 10 when running with the inbox StorAHCI.sys driver. Due to a firmware bug, the Solid-state drive (SSD) does not properly complete input/output when Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) mode is enabled. As a result, the Windows storage stack attempts to reset the device after waiting on unresponsive reads or writes for a period of time, and that results windows 10 100% Disk usage.
How to Fix Windows 10 1809 high disk usage problem
If you are also struggling with this problem, Windows 10 Running Slow, Unresponsive at startup, here apply solutions below to get rid of 100% Disk usage on Windows 10, 8.1 and 7.
Check for virus Infection
First of all, Perform a Full system scan with the latest updated Antivirus software to check and make sure any virus malware infection not causing the problem.
Run Windows system optimizer like Ccleaner to clean up junk cache, temp files, memory dump files, and repair broken registry entries that helps to optimize system performance and help to fix 100% disk usage problem.
Make sure to check and install the latest Windows updates, that may contain the bug fix for high Disk usage problem.
Again sometimes Security software running on background cause high System resource usage. Temporarily disable Antivirus software and check this reduce the Disk usage.
Perform windows Clean boot, that help to identify if any third party service, app causing High Disk usage problem on Windows 10, 8.1 and 7.
Temporarily Disable Windows Services
Most of the times problems with Superfetch service or Windows Search service result High Disk usage problem on windows 10. Temporarily disable these services and see if your computer speeds up. If it does, you can permanently disable by following the steps below. Let’s start with the Windows Search service.
Note: Disabling this service will stop the indexing of all files. But you will still have access to search, which will take a longer time.
Press Windows + R, type services.msc and ok
Scroll down and look for Service named, Windows search
Right click and select STOP.
Now Check to see if your disk usage and the performance of your computer improve.
If you discovered that Windows Search is causing your 100% disk usage error in Windows 10, you can permanently disable Windows Search.
To do this again open Windows services, double click on Windows services.
Here Windows search properties, Change the startup type disable.
Then check the service status if its running click on Stop.
Click ok And apply to make the changes.
Turn Off Sysmain service
And some other users have been identified Superfetch as a potential cause of disk performance issues in Windows 10 Disable SuperFetch help them to decrease the Disk usage and make the system running smoother.
Again open services, And double click on Sysmain service.
Under properties change the startup type Disable and Stop the service.
Click apply and ok to make save changes.
Check this helps to fix the problem.
Do the same procedure with other services ( BITS and Windows update) Most of the time fix the 100% Disk usage problem on Windows 10, 8.1 and 7. If you still having problem fallow the next solution.
Disable Background Running Apps
In Windows 10, some apps are always running in the background. Microsoft designed Windows 10 to run apps constantly to provide notifications to users and keep those apps updated with content that they fetch from the internet. There are plenty of users who never use the Store apps, but they still run in the background and consume system resources. Let’s Disable Them And free system resources usage include Hard disk.
To disable Background Apps on Windows 10
open Settings and Click on Privacy,
Scroll down and select Background Apps on the left side.
Here you have two options either you can turn off apps running in the background app (this will turn off all apps)
Or you can manually turn off apps one by one using turn off button as shown below image.
Disable Disk Defrag
Besides, the high disk usage problem could be related to the defrag tool in Windows 10. Sometimes, your computer is trying to defrag the drive. However, it’s actually a solid-state drive instead of a hard disk drive. You can press Windows + Q, type “Task Scheduler” without the quotes and disable the scheduled disk defrag task, if available.
Repair Disk With CHKDSK command
Run Disk Check utility and let windows to check Hard Disk For Errors.
Type cmd on Start menu search,
Right click on Command prompt and select run as administrator.
Type command chkdsk.exe /f /r and press Enter key.
Note: /F Parameter for force And /R parameter for Repair
Press Y when asking for Schedule to run Check disk utility on next start.
Close any program if running and restart windows.
This will check and fix disk drive errors automatically,
Reset Virtual Memory in Windows 10
Virtual memory uses your disk as RAM. When your computer runs out of RAM, it will use your system drive to store files temporarily and will swap those files back when required. Therefore, it can be considered as physical memory despite the fact that the performance can’t be the same.
However, if something goes wrong with the pagefile.sys, it can cause 100% disk usage issue on your Windows 10 computer. That’s the reason why you need to reset/reconfigure virtual memory settings to make sure everything is fine.
Right-click on this PC and choose Properties.
In the System window, look at the left sidebar and click on “Advanced system settings“.
From the Performance section, click Settings.
Then select the Advanced tab, and click on the “Change” button.
Make sure the box named “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” is checked.
Tip: To verify whether the virtual memory is the cause of Windows 10 100% disk usage problem or not, you can uncheck the box (mentioned above), choose “No paging file” and press OK. After that, rebooting your computer to see the result.
Disable Prefetch
Windows 10 creates Prefetch files every time you run applications on your computer. The purpose of Prefetch files is to record information about the files loaded by the applications, so as improve the loading times of applications by making use of the recorded information. Again, this feature has been linked to 100% Disk Usage Error in Windows 10 and you may want to disable this service by following these steps.
Press Windows + R, type regedit and ok to open the registry editor.
Backup Registry database, then navigate to the following path.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Double-click on EnablePrefetcher. You will see this to the right of your screen.
Change its value 0 to completely disable Prefetcher Service on your Computer
Note: You may also try to use value “1” – This will disable the Prefetcher service for only the Boot Files (instead of all files).
Fix your StorAHCI.sys driver
Another cause for your hard drive 100% utilization is a firmware bug in Microsoft AHCI driver called StorAHCI.sys
Due to a firmware bug, the Solid-state drive (SSD) does not properly complete input/output when Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) mode is enabled. As a result, the Windows storage stack attempts to reset the device after waiting on unresponsive reads or writes for a period of time.
Identify if you are running the inbox AHCI driver (StorAHCI.sys):
Open a command prompt with administrator privileges. Then type the following command in the command prompt window and hit Enter: devmgmt.msc
Under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers right-click on the AHCI controller node and select Properties. This node is usually called “Standard SATA AHCI Controller.”
Navigate to the driver tab and click Driver Details.
If you see “StorAHCI.sys” in the list, you are running the inbox driver.
Disable MSI for the controller in the registry:
In the same properties window opened in step 1.2, navigate to the Details tab and select Device instance path from the Property drop-down menu. Note this path.
Open the registry editor by typing regedit in the previously opened command prompt.
Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\ <AHCI Controller>\Device Parameters\Interrupt Management\MessageSignaledInterruptProperties, where <AHCI Controller> refers to the device instance path you noted in step 2.1.
Change the value of the MSISupported key from “1” to “0”.
If you don’t know which controller your boot device is attached to, repeat steps 2.1 through 2.4 for all AHCI controllers found under 1.2.
Reboot the machine.
Check Google Chrome or Skype causing 100% Disk usage
Open Chrome browser type chrome://settings/ and enter.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Advanced.
Under the Privacy and Security category, make sure Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly is turned off.
Close Skype if running,
Open Windows Explorer, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\.
Go to the Security tab and select Edit.
Click ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES and tick the Allow checkbox for Write.
Then click Apply, then OK to save your change.
Did these solutions help to fix Windows 10 1809 high disk usage problem? Let us know on comments below, Also read
