Windows 10: Painfully slow Windows 10, all of a sudden - concern over Disk 0 active time and disk...

Hi there,

I'm having a serious problem with my Samsung laptop (specs below). The system effectively spends most of the time at a complete halt - everything that is done happens painfully slowly. If, after maybe ten minutes of waiting for it to load, one looks at the Task Manager, it is possible to find that Disk 0 (C presents an active time of 100%, the disk transfer at 0% - 0KB/s write speed and 0KB/s read speed, if not for very occasional 'jolts' where the disk transfer spikes for less than a second every fifteen to thirty seconds.

However, for apparently no reason (certainly none that I can find), the system might 'decide' that nothing is wrong. For maybe thirty minutes to two hours at a time (though occasionally much less), the system functions perfectly normally, as though nothing is the matter. The active time fluctuates around 6-20% and the read and write speed are as normal. It works well enough that I can resume editing videos in this period. Then, again for apparently no reason, it will revert to an essentially useless state.

In terms of background info, the laptop is about five years old but it was top-spec at the time and otherwise has no trouble with video editing in Full HD using Vegas Pro), which serves as the primary function of the computer. I had a catastrophic problem with my hard drive two-to-three months ago, and I had that component replaced at the time. Ever since, the computer has performed as it had before (minus much of the data that couldn't be salvaged!), but I haven't used it very much since (for less than 20 hours) because I've been abroad. I've seen a couple of suggestions online for 'fixes' to similar problems, but all seem quite technical, and users seem to report limited success.

I'm at my wits' end with this problem. I can't even seem to understand whether it's hardware or software-based.

Thank you very much for your time,

Ed


Processor: Intel Core i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz

Ram: 8gb

Windows 10 Home

Version: 1803

OS Build: 17134.112

64-bit, x64-based processor

:)

 

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.

 

Insane Disk Activity on Vista Startup

Whenever I restart my machine, I get insane disk activity like 100% for about 3 minutes and everything is slow . After that it drops to 0-1 % .

I see this by using the disk activity sidebar gadget in vista .

 

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?