Windows 10: Performance Issues - Device Performance & Health Scan?

I have a PC that is about 3 years old, running Windows 10 Home 64 Bit. Starting sometime in late Oct it started randomly accessing drives/CPU/? every so often, causing significant stuttering and making it generally unusable for a few minutes at a time until it is done. It does this once every 45-90 minutes, fairly reliably. Recently it has occasionally once every day or two set off a longer cycle of the same symptoms that forces me to either wait much longer hours or reboot if I want to get back to normal.


I did some cursory poking around, and it turns out that every time this happens, Windows Security is doing a Device Performance & Health Scan. Not a threat or security scan; the Device Performance and Health tab only is updated, the Last Scan date and time. When the "longer" variety occurs, it's running non-stop back-to-back Health Scans. Either something is causing Windows Security to do the Health Scan far more often than it should and that is causing the performance issue, or something unrelated is going wrong that is causing Windows Security to do the Health Scan as a result. The Health Report is green across the board and there are no obvious system issues, and I have had no other major problems for the life of this computer. No hardware or usage pattern changes. Looking at my update history, this would have started around the time that I installed the 2020-10 Cumulative Update KB4578311; I have since installed the 2020-11 and -12 updates and am currently fully up to date on all Windows Updates.


My next step would normally be to turn off the Device Performance & Health Scan function to see whether that's the cause or the effect, but it doesn't look like I can do that without getting rid of Windows Security entirely and maybe not even then?. I am generally tech-savvy but I have limited experience in digging too deep into the Windows troubleshooting tools. I'd really prefer not to do a fresh install without at least identifying the problem first if only to make sure it's not hardware related or some unknown driver conflict. Thoughts on where I should be looking to hunt this down, or any other suggestions? I appreciate the assistance!

:)

 

Device performance & health scan unavailable

have same issue (Device performance & health scan unavailable). Windows 10 Pro Version 1703 (15063.138)

 

Device Performance & Health feature

This can be an issue with the old driver, update or hardware. However, for us to fully identify what is causing the issue, we may need to perform some troubleshooting steps. Please follow the steps below and check if it helps:

Step 1: Use System File Checker to check for system file corruption.

• Right-click (or press and hold) the Start 
  button, then select Command Prompt (Admin).
  
• Enter sfc/scannow(note the space between "sfc" and "/").

Step 2: Perform a clean boot. It will start Windows by using a minimal set of drivers
and start up programs. It will also eliminate software conflicts that could occur when you install a program, or an update, or when you run a program in Windows.

Once done, check if your Device Performance & Health will work and generate a report.

Let us know the result of the suggested steps.

Thank you.

 

Device and performance & health

Hi,

The result of the Health report is indicative of an issue with the device drivers. To better understand your concern, we'd like to know the following:

• If you're able to check if there are pending updates per device driver on your PC. To do this, see screenshot below.

• If you're able to see the details of the Health report by clicking the Learn more button.
  

• The last activities that you've performed on your device prior to your concern.
• If you're referring to the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter when you mentioned about running the troubleshooter.
• The version of Windows 10 that you're using on your device. To check this, you can perform the steps posted on this
  
  link.

We look forward to your response.