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After startup for 5 minutes, my system is very slow. The Task Manager shows that the disk usage is at 100%. (Later this number is around 2-4 %, but sometimes for 1-2 minutes goes up again at 100%.)

I searched a lot on Google. For example, I read related Microsoft answer page, and also other pages. I opened two topics on Microsoft answer. One in English and one in Hungarian.

But I didn't found the solution yet. So I would like to ask Community's help. :)

Here are the steps I have already done:

  • I disabled everything at startups (including services) and the issue is the same.
  • I disabled Prefetch and Superfetch, the Background Intelligent Transmission, Windows Search and Windows Defender but the issue still persist.
  • I made a health check on HDD, I made defrag and file system error check, but there are no errors.
  • Also I tried to reinstall the HDD's driver.
  • I made a full hardware checkup, with no errors.
  • The Windows and all the drivers are up-to-date.
  • I tried a clean start. The issue is the same.
  • I deleted Dropbox and all antivirus.
  • I turned off the MSI mode.

I using also Linux, where this error does not occur. Good to know, that Windows had 4 partitions, but I deleted 2 of them for Linux. I don't know what partitions were these but both were only 10 - 20 MB.

I using a Dell Inspiron 15R SE 7520 with Windows 10 Home.

Personally, I think it can be the Intel Rapid Store Technology "driver", because the problem started around when I installed it. (However, I'm not sure.) And my hardware is not supported yet by Intel, so I have no the newest driver. However, I deleted Intel's software and driver and the issue is the same.

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

SiGe
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  • Can you see in the Task Manager what process is using the disk so much? – RamonRobben Feb 25 '17 at 13:00
  • Not really. It seems "normal". Also Resource Manager doesn't show any process witch use the disk excessively. – SiGe Feb 25 '17 at 13:02
  • Updated drivers etc? – RamonRobben Feb 25 '17 at 15:11
  • Yes, every driver are up to date. – SiGe Feb 25 '17 at 15:23
  • why don't you remove the Intel driver if you think this causes your issue? Also replace HDD with a SSD and your issue is gone – magicandre1981 Feb 26 '17 at 07:00
  • I removed the driver, but the issue still persists. – SiGe Feb 27 '17 at 18:57
  • Linux and Windows use different file access patterns, so Linux may use disk less hard compared to Windows. To fix it, replace the HDD with SSD. – magicandre1981 Feb 28 '17 at 16:12
  • Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately replacing the HDD is not a solution to my problem. – SiGe Mar 01 '17 at 20:05
  • in this case you have to accept the slowdown. I use a SSD and don't have the issues that you have any longer. I had them before, too with the 5400rpm drive that I had in my Dell 15R SE 7520 . This seagate/Samsung M8 is the slowest HDD you can get – magicandre1981 Mar 02 '17 at 05:59
  • Hmmm... Yes, I really thinking to buy an SSD. However I had the fear that the issue will persist and will ruin my SSD. Becouse 2 month ago for years I haven't got this issue with the same HDD. – SiGe Mar 02 '17 at 09:09
  • I bought a Hdd Caddy to put the SSD and HDD the same time in the Dell. I notice that the HDD is now really slow after some years. But here I only store data, Windows and programs are on the SSD so my Windows is fast for 4 years without any issues. – magicandre1981 Mar 02 '17 at 14:41
  • Thank you for your answer. Now I really consider to buy an SSD. It is an other issue, but you mentioned that also you have the same laptop model than me. Is SSD can function with his highest seed? Or because the laptop is shipped originally with HDD it will have it's limits? – SiGe Mar 02 '17 at 15:05
  • the internal slot uses SATA3/6GBit so it is fast. buy a caddy which has a jumper to avoid ACPI.sys issues: http://superuser.com/a/1152438/174557 – magicandre1981 Mar 02 '17 at 19:33
  • ok, I summarized it in an answer. accept it if you find it helpful: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5235 – magicandre1981 Mar 03 '17 at 16:42
  • I have the exactly same issue on a Thinkpad T420 with a 500GB 5400 rpm HDD. I have no solution, but I can assure that the problem is not related to Win10 "using the disk more" than Linux. The disk is perfectly healthy according to its smart data. The disk works perfectly fine in Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Ubuntu 16.04. I also tried all the shenanigans with disabling services etc., but the problem persists. I am trying to track down the problem with Sysinternals ProcessExplorer, but couldn't get any conclusive data yet. – ndbd Mar 06 '17 at 11:31
  • I suspect that Win10 is going "rougue", i.e. Win10 is performing some disk operation that (due to whatever reason) fails, and then continues to try perform the same operation over and over. If anyone has a solution (and could confirm or deny whether replacing the disk helps) I would be very much interested... – ndbd Mar 06 '17 at 11:32
  • Can it be caused by the Ubuntu installation? Maybe the partitioning "harm" some NTFS parts of Windows? – SiGe Mar 08 '17 at 10:44
  • seems very unlikely, since I've created the partitions first, then installed ubuntu, and then only afterwards formatted the windows partition and installed windows... basically the same as the Bootcamp approach apple uses... – ndbd Mar 16 '17 at 12:35
  • I can confirm that switching to an SSD solved all my problems. My old config was a Thinkpad T420 with integrated graphics and an HTGS (Hitachi Global Storage) 5400 rpm 500 GB drive. I've switched the drive with an cheap Intenso SSD, and put (as suggested in the accepted answer) the HDD into a drive caddy. ALL PROBLEMS ARE GONE. I still cannot believer that the 5400rpm drive was too slow, since the amount of written data was negligible. I'd rather suspect an issue with the SATA controller and hdd firmware. After all, Sandy Bridge Chipsets are not officially supported by Intel for Win10. – ndbd Apr 10 '17 at 07:13
  • I reinstalled my Windows and the issue is still on going, so I'm confirmed that the solution will be the SSD. (However it isn't good that Windows can't run with HDD...) – SiGe Apr 11 '17 at 08:58
  • If I have the time, I will check with another HDD. Maybe it is really some issue with the firmware of that specific drive. I cannot believe that Windows 10 only works with SSDs if Windows 7 and Windows 8 worked without problem on the HDD. I'd be interested to hear whether an SSD or another HDD solved your problem. – ndbd Apr 13 '17 at 09:36
  • a different hdd works too - see my answer below. – ndbd Apr 15 '17 at 22:20
  • I am stuck with exact same issue for past week. Tried everything no luck. The machine was working fine for last 5+ years with Windows 7,8,10. Interestingly I found Microsoft addressing this issue [here](https://goo.gl/UTtBwe). But this page talks about same issue with SSD and solution given is to modify some registry which I dont find. Thus I created thread on [answers.microsoft.com](https://goo.gl/XtDSZF), but no luck. Can anyone have a look at these links and explain me a bit more? – Mahesha999 May 19 '17 at 05:50
  • It's strange if the issue is started just from past week. Probably you should investigate about what did you do in that time. Maybe you can make a distinct question here, on Superuser. – SiGe May 19 '17 at 07:44
  • Now I have formatted my `C:` drive to install clean Win 10. But the issue resurfaced. When I tried to log events in Process Monitor, majority of events were in `C:\Windows`. When I kill some process like OneDrive or Windows Search Indexer, issue usually goes away after some time say 10-15 min but not immediately. Everything looks pretty random!!! My OneDrive forlder is in `H:` drive not `C:`. Once I killed telemetary service too (because it made large number of accesses to `C:\Windows`) and issue went away after some time, but again not immediately. I am not able to find sure fix/reason. – Mahesha999 May 19 '17 at 12:34
  • forgot to mention I have updated my new Windows installation to the latest one too. Can driver also get updated? Is there anyway to know which and what version of disk driver is installed? Or should I try factory reset, find the driver and its version in the factory factory reset and ensure the same is running on my Windows 10. Please suggest me something before I spend on SSD... – Mahesha999 May 20 '17 at 07:52

5 Answers5

4

I'm also using the Dell Inspiron 15R SE and the Samsung M8 is very slow (5400rpm) drive.

The data about the 100% usage come from the disk controller (Microsoft explained it in the video at 6m55 seconds). The disk controller tells Windows that the drive is busy doing so many operations and Windows displays it in the taskmanager graph.

I "solved" by replacing the HDD with a SSD (Crucial MX100). To have more space, I used a HDD caddy in the DVD slot and use here the old M8 HDD to store data, while the SSD hold Windows + all programs.

Attention, make sure you buy a HDD caddy with a jumper, otherwise you may run into ACPI.sys issues which can't be fixed. Changing the jumper can fix it.

enter image description here

For performance and stability reasons, use the SDD in the slot where the HDD was and use the HDD in the caddy.

Community
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magicandre1981
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Intel Rapid Storage technlogy was causing the bad performance for me. 100% disk usage for 5-10 minutes after Windows 10 boot.

The problem seems to be the Link Power Management. If enabled, it causes extra delays for many disk operations. I am not sure if this is related to Samsung ST1000LM024 disk or Dell Inspiron 23 5348 specifically, but when I disabled the setting, I got my normal performance back!

Start Intel Rapid control center, go to performance tab and disable the link power managemet and you are done.

Tmu
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Run CrystalDiskInfo and it will tell you the health of your disk drive. Below is what it showed for me. Look up what each metric means here.

crystaldiskinfo results

desbest
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I experienced similar issues on a ThinkPad T420. The disk usage was constantly around 100%. The usual answers found in the net and mentioned in the question did not help at all. The disk usage was constantly 100%, and to an extend that made the GUI laggy.

The harddrive installed was a Hitachi (HGST) 500 GB 5400 rpm SATA drive, scrapped from a broken Macbook Unibody 2012.

As mentioned in the other answer, installing a cheap Intenso SSD solved all Problems, and Windows ran flawlessly (I did a clean-install though).

Since I wanted to further track down the problem, I changed the SSD to an older Seagate 5400 rpm SATA drive ( 80 GB ). Naturally the Installation took more time, and naturally after the Installation, Windows required some time for indexing and starting up Services. After this one-time procedure, the disk activity is way down. Of Course, some Background activities bring disk-activity, but it is usually in the 10 to 15% range. The GUI has no lag at all, it feels just like a typical Windows System with an old-style 5400 rpm drive. For example as writing now, svchost (wsappx) is running, and downloading/preparing default applications that are loaded from the store, like solitaire Collection. Nevertheless, I can write this without any Problems.

In summary: If you have constant 100% disk usage where the ressource monitor does not Show specific processes/programs that actually use the disk that much, then consider changing the hdard-drive either to an SSD (preferred) or simply to a DIFFERENT HARD DISK. I suspect an issue with the disk-Controller driver and hard-disk Firmware.

ndbd
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Before replacing the hardrive (hopefully with an ssd drive) see if you can address the items on this guide:

https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/fix-100-disk-usage-in-task-manager-improve-pc-performance-on-windows-10/

maybe, just maybe, you might get your hdd usage/trashing back down. I did run into this same issue and although the SMART reports were not consistent with imminent hdd failure, replacing the hd was the simplest solution to this issue, I had, I'm glad I gave it a fight though as I learned a few things along the way.

Good luck.

Francisco Cortes
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