100% disk usage, computer unresponsive, no processes runming. Please help!!

Isaac_7

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Oct 29, 2015
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Hi,
My computer currently has 100% disk activity with 0 response time and reading and writing. This does sometimes go up, but the response time shoots up to between 10,000 and 60,000 and falls down. I've disables superfetch windows search, app tips, reinstalled my anti-malware, run hdd error check and maintenance tasks. Booted in safe mode and clean boot, but still found that even in safe mode it was very unresponsive. Some solutions temporarily fixed the issue but for no more than 5 minutes. No processes seem to be responsible either I've checked both the resource monitor and the events log and found nothing. If anyone could help I would be so happy! I've been trying to fix this for 7 hours now with no luck.
 
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I told you in my first post. it was either a hard drive or virus so serious you needed a wipe/reload.

since the hard drive is getting louder i'm pretty much willing to bet it's a dying hard drive. Been in, around and employed in the IT field for a while now. Your symptoms are pretty much spot on for...

Isaac_7

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Oct 29, 2015
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I'm currently booted in safe mode which is now equally unresponsive, trying to check for anybupdates! I'm also starting to thinknit may be hardware as the normal sounds of an overworked hard drive seem to have gotten noisier, and are on all the time now. Is there any other possibility other than hardware if it's not the update?
 

zizoux07

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Sep 2, 2015
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i don't think it's a hdd problem (it's still an option)
i had this problem ever since i got windows 8
i solved by disabling superfetch , windows search services and stop windows automatic update and scheduled disk optimization
 

Isaac_7

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Oct 29, 2015
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Sorry if I sound a little blunt I've been doing this for over 8 hours now... as you can read in the description I've already done that. I did forget to mention that I am running windows 10 so thank you for pointing that. I'm currently running a hard drive boot up scan and repair to fix it after I couldn't even find if I was up to date in safe mode. Although it is making a lot of clicking noises right now... doesn't sound happy
 


I told you in my first post. it was either a hard drive or virus so serious you needed a wipe/reload.

since the hard drive is getting louder i'm pretty much willing to bet it's a dying hard drive. Been in, around and employed in the IT field for a while now. Your symptoms are pretty much spot on for either problem. Though I did see something similar once with a bad windows update on a server. So who knows. You could try loading into windows recovery, and try restoring from a recent~ish restore point (say a few days before this happened). see if that works. Otherwise I'd say buy yourself a nice 250-500gb SSD, a copy of windows, and do a clean install on that. then transfer whatever you can off of the old drive, give it a good old fashion disk format and see if it was a virus or simply a dying hard drive. If it was a virus you can use your old mechanical drive as a data drive in your pc. if it was a dying hard drive you'll probably want to run out and get yourself another drive to provide yourself a bit extra storage.

if you want someway to test the drive you can always download Western Digital Data Lifeguard and run some tests on the drive. though it sounds like it's not really functioning well enough to even run basic diagnostics on it, so just tossing that option out there in the event you'd like another option to try.
 
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