100% Disk Usage from "System" Process

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PixelHaven

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Dec 11, 2016
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Recently I noticed a slowdown in online video playback (Youtube videos, Twitch VOD's, etc.) and looked at my task manager to see if there was a bottleneck and found that my Disk usage was at 100%, due mostly to the "System" process. I've looked into a number of different solution (listed below) but to no avail.

Unlike others who have posted in the past about similar issues, my computer seems to run normally most of the time - aside from the occasional stutter - despite being at 100% disk usage. Although things seem to run fine, I don't think it's a good idea to have my HDD running at 100% all the time.

What seems to be happening is that "System" is using the latent space after all other processes have "had their fill". For example, if System is using 100% and I boot up Google Chrome, Chrome will start to use whatever it needs (say ~2%) and System will defer to 98%.

Here are the solutions I have tried so far:
1) Disabling "Windows Search", "BITS", and "Superfetch"
2) Disabling Adobe Flash Player plugin in Chrome
3) Disabling MSI mode (according to Windows Support https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3083595)
4) Altering Pagefile settings
5) Turning off "Show me tips about windows"
6) Scanning for viruses

Any help would be appreciated, I've been scouring the internet from Microsoft Support to Reddit to try and find a solution that works but no luck so far.
 
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cddm95ace

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Apr 11, 2014
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I'm also having exactly the same issue, and have tried all those troubleshooting steps plus updating my C: drive's firmware. My computer did recently have a hard shutdown after power loss, and it then had a Windows 10 update when turning back on after the power loss.
 
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johnbl

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Nov 4, 2012
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update the motherboard bios and drivers. boot windows and run rammap and clear the working set
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229
this will make isolation of the problem much more simple.
after clearing the working set, reboot the machine and see if you still have problems. If you do you would start task manager, select the performance tab, go to the bottom of the page and open resource monitor
then select the disk tab and take a look at what is causing disk activity, look at the file name and google the .exe
you can also use process explorer to do this:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer

you might find that rammap, file details tab is easier to use:https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229

process explorer works well for certain causes of this problem. you can expand service host rolled up .exe to see which one might be causing a problem.

You might also find that a firmware update on certain solid stat drives can help fix this problem. but be sure to update the BIOS and the sata drivers (for the cpu chipset supported sata and and external sata chipset driver) you might also find that moving your sata port of your drive to the primary sata controller can prevent the problem. the primary controller is the one that is supported directly by the CPU and is updated by Microsoft update. The often faster secondary controller is updated by your motherboard vendor website in conjunction with a BIOS update.
People often just do not update the BIOS and external SATA drivers so they tend to have more bugs.

there are some other error conditions that could also cause the system to get stuck at 100% disk usage but I listed the main causes that I have seen. When you identify the actual process it is much easier to identify the solution.

you can also watch the disk activity in resource monitor and selectively kill processes until you identify the process that is doing all of the disk IO.

then you can start and stop the actual service to confirm the problem and look for a solution. for example I have done this to find problems in the windows search indexer, the solution was to delete the search indexer database and I did not have the problem on my machine ever again. The database got corrupted and was saved in a corrupted state and just keep indexing a directory in a endless loop.
the bottom of the directory pointed to a midpoint in the same directory so the search just never found the end of the directory tree.
 
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Colif

Colif

Win 11 Master
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Jun 12, 2015
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curious, did you suddenly start getting this sometime this week, and did you get a windows update at around same time?

I have no proof but 6 other people all posted about 100% usage on hdd today and that is a pattern I can't just ignore.
 
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PixelHaven

Commendable
Dec 11, 2016
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Yeah, it started today. My most recent Windows update was 2 days ago. I tried uninstalling that update but I'm still having the issue.
Booting in safe mode, everything was fine so it doesn't seem like a hardware problem.
I looked closer at the numbers and they don't go above 10MB/s, generally sitting around 1-2MB/s but it still considers that as 100%.
I haven't tried the fix mentioned above but I'll have to come back to it tomorrow. Appreciate the help so far and I'll update if I find out anything else.
 
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Colif

Colif

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Jun 12, 2015
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are you on a hdd or ssd? System using a constant amount of my hdd but not anywhere about 6% constantly on my PC

I think i seen this before... yesterday, its a process called WPR_iniaited_DiagtrackaotLogger_Diagtrack
it part of Windows Process Recorder and I don't know why the last patch has started it running.

see if the advice here helps: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/588339/just-found-diagtrack-running-in-services/
 
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