PC with good specs lagging like insane when playing games and browsing the web - help!

[jasondborroel]

I have a PC that's used by our whole family, but it should be more than capable of running games on lowest specs. It's running Ripjaws X 1x8 DDR3 RAM at 1600-somethings, an i5-3570k, a GT 430, a 530W PSU, and a nearly 1tb hard drive. The case has good ventilation but the fans need lots of cleaning. I only have around 2 fans, of which one is the cpu fan. Heat isn't really making any problems.
I've run Tf2 on the highest settings before, and Fortnite on Low-Medium settings without any failure or stuttering, but one day, I noticed that Disk usage was almost always at 100% while barely doing anything, from browsing the web to using the file browser. CPU usage is fine. Also, TF2 lagged to the point where it went from lagging to instant lagging again, making it unplayable. Fortnite lags pretty much every 5 seconds, and these lag periods last so the game doesn't take any controls for around 10 seconds. It's not the keyboard or mouse. I checked. Even if it doesn't lag, most of the time it will not move if I press W, A, S, or D. Clicks won't register. Basically, any game is unplayable. There are no processes eating up any usage, and Malware Bytes and my Adware Detector don't find anything wrong. The computer used to work just fine. I took out my old RAM to install the new RAM just today, but nothing changed (I didn't expect anything to happen anyways). Disabling Superfetch helps sometimes, and we recently defragmented the computer. Please help!

 

[chegalhavara]

Update you drivers and check if your Hdd is not too full. A clean installation of windows and drivers might also solve your problems.

 

[Serinox]

You could open the windows recource monitor and determine what process is causing the high usage. But anyways just get a sdd for the windows partition, they are cheap now and essential for any modern pc.

Using a hdd for Windows nowadays is like driving a car with fastened handbrake.