Windows 10: 100% Disk usage on startup and games with SSD

I've been having this issue with my desktop where it will be fairly slow/unresponsive during startup and on loading screens for games. I've noticed by looking in task manager that the disk usage spikes to 100% during this, which seems strange. There's also some slowdown issues accessing files like photos on occasion. Usually the advice I see about this is to get an SSD drive, but in my case I already have one. Not sure if it's a problem with some program or the physical drive and I'm not sure where to start.



It's especially frustrating because this is a newer computer. It's a prebuilt gaming desktop that I've been using since early December, and it was predictably fast at the start. Around February it started slowing down and it progressed to become so bad (windows explorer lagging or becoming unusable) that I had to do a fresh install of Windows 10 around the start of March. That fixed the problem temporarily but it's started slowing again and I need to figure out what's actually causing it.



I took some screencaps of my task manager during startup and gaming so people can see what I'm talking about, hope it helps.

https://imgur.com/a/NkLfUWi

This is my usage during startup. I'm not sure what's causing these processes to use all my resources like this. Does the read/write speed seem low for capacity to anyone else?



https://imgur.com/a/IMkTSo0

As a gaming example I looked at it during a loading screen for Final Fantasy XIV, an MMO with a lot of load screens so I encounter issues a lot. I'm getting frequent hangups of 30-40+ seconds during loading (very slow compared to the "fresh" install) and occasionally some issues loading graphics or sound. Task manager looks like pretty similar issues to startup with the game in place of microsoft services.

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:)

 

100% disk usage.

Summer has ended and my girlfriend booted her school laptop for the first time in months, only for it to be so unbearably slow that it took several minutes to log in. She handed it to me and said "fix it"... that was 3 days ago and now I am here to humbly
ask the community what is going on with this GD laptop.

It boots and task manager reports 100%CPU usage, it then lags for several seconds and displays 100%disk usage with CPU usage bouncing between 30-60%.

If you leave it alone with task manager running it will eventually quiet down to a reasonable 0-5% disk usage, but doing ANYTHING causes it to bounce right back to 100%.

I have tried EVERYTHING.

• disable superfetch.
• disable microsoft search.
• disable updates and suggestive tips.
• updated to the most current version of microsoft. (it hadn't been updated since 2018 when she bought it.)
• reconfigured AHCI PCIE.
• changed energy options.
• disabled indexing.
• reset the virtual memory.
• ran disk defragment and disabled all scheduling.
• updated all drivers.
• deleted google chrome.
• Disabled all services that weren't microsoft services and disabled all startup programs (clean boot).

Still no change in the disk usage.

Its an HP Laptop model 15-bw0xx with Windows 10 home edition version 10.0.18362

after messing with it this long im considering replacing the HDD with an SSD but I fear that it wont fix the issue.

 

100% Disk Usage during startup/opening new programs


Hello,
Awhile ago, I was still on Windows 7, and my system began to be incredibly slow, especially during startup. I wasn't sure back then what the problem was, or what I had done to make it so slow. I figured it was linked to BlueStacks, and uninstalling it did help a lot. Startup took about 10 minutes, instead of over 30. However, it was still very slow to open programs, right click, and play games. I thought upgrading to windows 10 might help, but I was unable to because of an error. It only worked after I used CCleaner to fix up the registry. Windows 10 allowed me to see the cause of the sluggish behaviour, as task manager reports 100% disk usage during starup. The problem is, no program in the list actually uses the disk activity, and idles around 0.3MB/sec. It was still always 100%, and only started dropping to normal levels after I messed around with skype (see below for the list of things I tried). Now after startup, if left for a long while, it will eventually finish and drop to idle around 0%. But if I open a program for the first time (ie. WoW, Firefox, Documents, Word etc.) it spikes to 100%. For most programs, it will return to 0%, such as firefox. I am able to browse with no problem, but it will occasionally still spike to 100%, though this seems random. It is most noticable when playing games, such as WoW. If opening for the first time, it spikes to 100%. Some time later it will return to 0%. If I log in, or switch zones when playing, open my bags etc, it again spikes to 100% and makes the game almost unplayable, as it freezes until disk usage returns to 0%. It only behaves this way on lowest settings. If I play on max settings, it almost always stays at 100% (my laptop can easily handle max settings btw). Other games are similar, but the less complex the game is, the less spikes happen. Here is a list of things I have tried to fix the 100% disk usage:
-Turn off tips about windows - no effect
-Turn off BITS - no effect
-Turn of prefetch and superfetch - no effect
-Turned on read/write for skype using the security tab in properties - Disk usage is no longer always 100%, but still spikes as told above.
-Turned off cloud protection and real time protection for windows defender - no effect
-Uninstalled/reinstalled nvidia drivers, and geforce experience - no effect, also worth mentioning that when I restarted after uninstalling, the system took almost an hour to startup, disk usage was again always 100%, and took ages to reinstall the latest drivers. After using CCleaner and getting rid of system files/registry cleanup, the system was as before, 0% disk usage, but 100% spikes.
-Increasing the RAM cache - no effect
-turning off disk fragment scheduling
-Disabling all startup programs - startup takes a lot less time, but disk usage is still 100% during startup
-Disabling all non-microsoft services - no effect
-Check disk using cmd, no errors reported
I installed HD sentinel, and it says disk health is at 98%, with 3 weak sectors, but no action required. Disk temperature is also normal, but if disk usage is 100% for long enough, it begins rising, up to 60+ degrees (C).
Im running out of options, as I've tried nearly everything suggested by google. The only thing that had any significant effect was the read/write enabling for skype, but even that didnt solve the problem entirely. I even tried uninstalling skype, to no avail.
Please help, the new patch for WoW released, and I really want to be able to play normally. Sorry for the lengthy post.

 

100% disk usage

The most common cause of 100% disk usage appears to be Superfetch and Prefetch, but there are also other causes. You can try disabling both these features and see if it helps.

This article provides steps to disable prefecth and superfetch:

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How to Fix 100% Disk Usage Error in Windows 10