Windows 10: Disk active time at 100, then PC freezes

Hi, I've started having problems with gaming recently. When I start any game CS:GO, Valorant, Minecraft, PUBG or anything else my disk active time in task manager goes up to 100% though there was 1 instance where it only went up to 50% when playing CS:GO for some reason and after that the PC freezes to the point where I can't do anything but power cycle it. As you can imagine, a gamer's worst fear is not being able to play games, so, being myself, I went on to search for what is causing this problem and how to solve it. I came across tons of different websites, with loads of all sorts o

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Disk Active time 100% Disk transfer rate 0

This is a problem I've seen reported countless times, on Microsoft support sites and elsewhere. Task Manager shows "Disk Active time 100% Disk transfer rate 0", and everything that's running on the computer freezes, although sometimes you can switch windows,
or even perform some operations within a window, but other times
everything freezes, including the mouse pointer. It usually lasts for 30 or 60 seconds, but sometimes it goes on for several minutes. Then it stops and everything goes back to normal, including Disk active time and Disk transfer rate.

It happens regardless of the apps I'm running or the activities I'm doing. I've even seen it happen with no user apps running at all - no browser, no file manager, nothing but background stuff. It happens every single day, regardless of whether there has
been a Windows update installed.

Microsoft gave me a fix for this problem a week ago, but it didn't work. Here are the steps I followed:

at admin command line prompt:

• Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}
• dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
• reboot
• find driver file for Intel(R) 9 Series Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller
  • C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\iaStorA.sys
• Details tab from Properties window for controller
  • Device instance path:
    • PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_9C83&SUBSYS_06B01028&REV_03\3&11583659&0&FA
• find registry key for disk controller
  • Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_9C83&SUBSYS_06B01028&REV_03\3&11583659&0&FA\Device Parameters\Interrupt Management\MessageSignaledInterruptProperties
  • change MSISupported from 1 to 0
• reboot

The instructions I was given include this for Step 4: If you see “StorAHCI.sys” in the list, you are running the inbox driver. But my driver is iaStorA.sys, so maybe this
fix doesn't even apply to me.

After doing all of the above, twice, I still have the problem. I've seen this now over a period of about three years, on two completely different laptops, one a Toshiba running Windows 8.1 and currently on a Dell running Windows 10. I also have a Thinkpad
for work that runs W7, and I've never seen it happen on that machine. It got so bad on the Toshiba that I ended up discarding it, after spending countless hours trying to fix it.

I've also tried all the fixes I've found on the web, e.g. disable superfetch, disable BITS, add write permissions to Skype and the browser. Nothing I've found so far has helped. I also reverted Windows back to build 1703. That didn't help either.

 

SSD Disk Active time 100%

Hi,
I have a relatively fresh installation of Windows 10 but it often gets very laggy.
- Any window takes a while to open
- Even typing on the keyboard has a delay
- Programs not responding

I did the usual checks such as
- Antivirus / Antispyware
- Drivers update

I noticed that my C: SSD disk is often at 100% "Active Time". There are some processes writing/reading from the SSD but that something the SSD should handle without freezing the entire OS.









Any ideas what's wrong?

cheers,
Tex

 

SSD Disk Active time 100%

Hi,
so the after using the PC for a while with the new SSD, I can confirm that this was the problem.

The problem on the older SSD was not high usage but the fact that even a "normal" usage was creating a bottleneck on everything.

Here, I'm downloading at 370Mbps and the disk activity is only at 10% where the older disk would be at 100%





Those are my disk speeds now:





Thanks for your help.

cheers