Windows 10: Disk Usage 100%, Transfer Rate 0, slowdown and crashes

I've had this issue intermittently the past few months ever since I bought this computer in November last year, but more and more often the past few weeks where my computer will slow down in all aspects, programs will crash, and the computer itself will occasionally blue screen. I've noticed that every time this happens, the disk active time % in Task Manager is showing 100% but there are no programs running that even take up 1 MB/s. If I go to performance, the disk active time graph is maxed out but the transfer rate graph below it is showing 0 activity.The only time that I can reliably insti

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Upgraded to Windows 10 - Disk 0 Usage 100

I agree. This entire thread has appeared unproductive as this issue continues. The one point perhaps that has not been discussed appears to be that even though the disk 0 usage is at 100% the processes running never add up to 100percent. for example at 24%
usage there are 10 processes listed as using 0.1 mb/sec which totals 1MB /sec. from that one could assume that at 100% the processes may total 4MB/sec but I routinely see the system process spike upwards of 25Mb/sec and after any usage climbs over 7mb/sec
the disk 0 reads at 100%. also the running processes are never the same. there is no one process which creates the issue.

A better solution would be for Microsoft to explain the point and purpose of the disk usage, and how it is reported. it is reported at the top as a percentage and in the row as a transfer speed. (mb/s).

The question is what is up with that specifically, how do I determine the max transfer speed of disc 0, and at what point will system performance slow to an unacceptable user level? when it does what are the steps to take to identify and resolve the issue?

 

how to determine what's causing 100% disk usage

Considering your 2nd screenshot, assuming your Disk column is organised high to low, you have a problem with disk transfer rate- it appears to be low yet shown as 100%

There are various programs running that appear unnecessary.

Suggest you do a clean boot and compare. You should expect disk usage when idle - a few mins after boot - to be zero unless there's good reason.

Comparing your 1st and 3rd screenshots, note the max transfer rate is 10x that in the 3rd screenshot.

It's not doing an update, and not apparently a paging problem.

From that it appears you have limited disk transfer rate, and the disk activity doesn't settle to near zero.

There are several threads on the topic of limited transfer rate - here are some:
Disk usage 100% please help Solved - Page 2 - Windows 10 Forums
Slow internal hard drive tansfer speeds - Windows 10 Forums
100% Disk Usage, tried some methods found online. - Windows 10 Forums

I'd suggest looking through those first, using any ideas there, keep a list of what you try, and post back with that list if you still have problems.


Please post specs of your PC. See mine for comparison.

 

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.