100% disk usage problem

[Cornelius_4]

Hopefully this is the right place to ask this. I've been trying to fix this by looking at older threads on the issue and I'm having no luck. My computer is running so slow it is barely operable. This was a fairly sudden change that occurred yesterday morning. Prior to that I had noticed irregular slowness over the past month in how it processes things, but nothing quite like it is now.

The slowness is associated with everything I do except on my external hard drive; slow web browsing (just got the internet hooked up yesterday, haven't had internet for about 4 months), start menu takes 2-3 minutes to open, even trying to open windows explorer often gives me the "x is not responding" prompt. If I can get to my external hard drive I'm fine though. For example, I have some mp3s on my C drive. The same mp3s are backed up on my external drive. If I try to play the file on my C drive it runs ok for the most part but it keeps skipping and needs to load randomly even if I'm playing the same file in loop. I never have these issues with my external drive's files.

When I look in task manager everything except disk usage is at normal, low levels (CPU, memory, etc). I have Windows 8 (just the regular one, not pro or anything). My computer shows 283/931GB still free too.

Things I've tried so far:
• Disabling BITS, Windows Search, and Superfetch
• Modifying pagefile size
• Running Disk Cleanup
• Using SeaTools and running tests on my hard drive (it passed the tests).
• Deleting a few windows updates that I downloaded yesterday (I have auto-updates turned off)
• Optimizing and defragmenting drive
• Error checking for drive C in My Computer's properties

I'm not sure what else to do. Can anyone help? I'm almost thinking it might be a failing hard drive? I've had this thing for about 5 years.

 

[Colif]

Have you run an AV & Malware scan?
Have you checked you have latest drivers? Never know, might be new Win 8 drivers...

Open a command prompt (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter

once its finished, copy/paste this into same window:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

SFC checks system files, DISM cleans the files SFC uses. So If SFC had found files it couldn't fix before, re run it after DISM & restart PC

 

[Cornelius_4]

Have you run an AV & Malware scan?
Have you checked you have latest drivers? Never know, might be new Win 8 drivers...

Open a command prompt (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter

once its finished, copy/paste this into same window:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

SFC checks system files, DISM cleans the files SFC uses. So If SFC had found files it couldn't fix before, re run it after DISM & restart PC

I ran SFC /Scannow and it said "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations". I ran the DISM thing and got error 0x800f0906:

"Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 6.2.9200.16384
Image Version: 6.2.9200.16384

[==========================100.0%==========================]

Error: 0x800f0906

The source files could not be downloaded.
Use the "source" option to specify the location of the files that are required t
o restore the feature. For more information on specifying a source location, see
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=243077.

The DISM log file can be found at C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log"

I'm a bit confused on what they're talking about on that link though. I also tried running scans through both Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, I updated my drivers too.

 

[Colif]

I know what it means, it doesn't always ask for it so I go with short versions

DISM source
Download a copy of the win 8.1 iso from here - create ISO by telling it you want to make DVD - and then mount that ISO in file explorer (see here) and then copy paste the below command into command prompt (admin)

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /source:WIM:X:\Sources\Install.wim:1 /LimitAccess
Where "X" is the drive letter where the ISO is located. Simply change the "X" to the correct drive letter

 

[Cornelius_4]

I know what it means, it doesn't always ask for it so I go with short versions

DISM source
Download a copy of the win 8.1 iso from here - create ISO by telling it you want to make DVD - and then mount that ISO in file explorer (see here) and then copy paste the below command into command prompt (admin)

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /source:WIM:X:\Sources\Install.wim:1 /LimitAccess
Where "X" is the drive letter where the ISO is located. Simply change the "X" to the correct drive letter

I forgot to mention that I installed Windows 8.1 a few days ago. The popup kept coming up telling me to install it when I turned my computer on so I did it through the store app. Should I still follow this step?

 

[Colif]

have you still got 100% usage?

Whether you run dism fix or not is up to you, I was just showing you how to fix error

do you have all the windows updates as if you were to run fix, the version on ISO has to match what yu have installed or it wouldn't work anyway.