Windows 10: Extremely slow performance - Disk 100% active time

Hello,


I just put a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro on my old desktop. It's using a Samsung PM830 SSD to run the system and a Seagate 2tb secondary drive. The only other programs I've installed on the computer is Steam and Google Chrome.


When I try to run any software, or download something from Steam, my system starts to run really slow. I open the task manager and it shows 100% active time however the read and write speed are either very low or zero. After a short while my download stops and I get a "disk write error" on Steam. While trying to do Windows System Updates, the downloads stop and I get an error 0x800706be.


In researching the issue on Windows Tech Support forums, I come across a very similar entry. There was an answer by Marc Cai that delves into using the registry editor to make an entry. While looking in my registry editor I notice my hard drives are listed under SCSI instead of PCI, and there are much fewer parameters when compared to the screen shot by Mark Cai. I don't even have a parameter for Interruption Management.


This leads me to wonder, is my registry setup incorrectly? I only installed Windows 10 Pro 2004 this morning and have made no changes to the registry myself.


Please help

:)

 

Very slow boot time - 100% disk active time

Thanks for helping out.

Disabling fast startup made boot time MUCH WORSE ! (took like 4-5 minutes after logging into windows for disk activity to drop below 100%).

Also, a clean boot didn't help either but I could see that Bitdefender antivirus could not be disabled, so I went all the way and completely uninstalled it. This helped boot time (no 100% disk activity this time at all upon boot which is normal since nothing loads up on boot), but even the slightest task (like opening a single docx) makes disk activity go all the way up to 100% for a few seconds (4-5 sec), during which everything is laggy.

I managed to grab a screenshot of the resource monitor when the HDD was @ 100% (with Bitdefender still installed), and figured out that the disk goes to 100% with a Total (read/write) speed of 3 MB/s ! I don't know if that's normal... Also attached is the bottom part of CrystalDiskMark as requested







Running the /sfc scannow command gave showed no violations





Also, new CrystalDiskMark test, with no antivirus installed :





I am beginning to think that disk read/write/access speed is the reason behind all problems because, even after successfully booting into windows and the disk activity goes to normal levels, it still goes to 100% and the system becomes extremely laggy/slow even for the simplest of tasks...

 

Disk active time is 100% and slow startup in Windows 10 Home

Disk active time is 100% after startup causing slow performance of system. This is happening on HP laptop installed with Windows 10 Home 64 bit Edition OS. Could anyone help?

 

Very slow boot time - 100% disk active time

Yeah, that will happen. That's why I said to give it a "few" good shutdowns. Usually, when I see all kinds of disk activity at startup that doesn't go away, or takes forever to go away, it can be a cause of Fast Startup being on. Turning it off can let the programs that need to finish things up, actually finish them up. Fast Startup is like a hybrid hibernation. Many times, things like FPRs (Files Pending Rename) and other stuff that needs to be done outside the OS, never have a chance to get done, because Fast Startup never lets the OS go completely.

Any AV is going to put stress/activity on a HDD; removing Bitdefender was a good test, but it appears you have something else going on. The Read Error Rate (1st line of Crystal Disk Info) may just be another symptom of whatever the problem is.

Thanks - the two attributes I was looking for were Current Pending Sector Count and Uncorrectable Sector Count, both of which are fine.

I'm no HDD expert, and perhaps others will have more ideas for you, but I think perhaps you might want to run the Seagate Seatools utility on that drive, and see if it passes. You'll want to run the long test, and it will take quite some time on a 1TB drive.
SeaTools | Seagate Support Deutschland

Just thinking how a mechanical drive works (compared to an SSD), and seeking data, if it's scattered all over, a defrag would help. But this is a new installation. There may be something physically wrong with that drive, (or the connection) and Seagate would have to tell you what tests to run to give them whatever info they need to determine that.

Of course, it's always possible that it was a bad OOBE setup, and a reinstall might help (yes, I've seen it happen), but that would mean setting up all your software all over again.

Perhaps some hardware experts will chime in with some other ideas for you.