Disk disk almost always at 100%, laptop extremely slow and crashes

[Justin5609]

Pretty much the above. Some days it's fine, others (like now) its very slow (it's a brand new ultrabook) with the disk stuck at 100% with nothing actually using it, and eventually freezes up and takes forever to boot, rinse and repeat

Dead harddrive?

 

[SchizTech]

What are the specs of that machine? Is it a regular HDD or SSD?

Let's try to determine whether there's software or hardware at fault with some tests. On a fresh restart, how much starts with Windows? If there are pre-installed programs you don't need just uninstall them and other things you can remove from the startup menu (in Task Manager, startup tab).

As to diagnostic tests, some laptops have utilities built in. On a Dell you'll often find them in the F12 bootup menu, on an HP it may be under F2 or in the BIOS at F10. Of course plenty of third party tools are available:

Seagate Seatools for HDD: https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/ (comes in two flavors: boot disk (DOS version) or to run in Windows (Win version))
Memtest86 or Windows Memory diagnostic (google former or search for "Windows Memory diagnostic" in start menu)

 

[Justin5609]

It's an ASUS machine
i5 6200 CPU
8GB DDR4 RAM
1TB Seagate 5400RPM drive

I tried re-installing windows. No difference. In the task manager there's nothing using the disk really, all processes are using 0 - 0.1MB/s

Not much software installed on it, I bought it just for school so just the basics. Does it with even with absolutely no programs running as well.

I'll try the windows memory diagnostic!