Windows 8.1 100% disk usage

[Zachary Roberts]

I've noticed my PC running at 100% disk usage on more than one occasion. AVG seems to always be at the top of the list of disk reads/writes. So maybe this is the culprit?

I'm pretty sure nothing is physically wrong with my computer as I had issues like this before on Windows 8 (on a laptop) and those issues weren't reproduced when I ran Windows 7 on that laptop.

It can't be a driver issue as the latest drivers (Windows 8 compatible) are all installed and operational. Today my disk ran to 100% shortly after startup and it was so busy doing "stuff" that my PC froze for a few seconds (not even the mouse could move) then it unfroze itself a few seconds later. Like I said, I've had these issues before on Windows 8. I've also googled around and found this is a common problem.

Does anyone know if there is a solution to this? When my PC isn't running at 100% disk usage it performs well.

 

[masiq]

to check your windows update to manual, you need to press windows+i then as you can see change pc setting at the bottom click that and it will take you to pc setting then you will list of option, you need to click the updates and recover then you got to click "choose who updates get installed" then other page will open and need to change the auto updates setting to whether i install update or not..

 

[Mrshake]

thanks you very much,i'm vietnamese,and i know a lot of english,,,i try with your way and see it's great.....

 

[Ramesh Shrivastava]

start virtualdisk service... and set it for automatic...

 

[ggoldenb]

Hello,
my disk also was 100% in use , was noisy and I lost it , PC was under warranty and HP replaced HD and re-install OS.
But after 2 days disk utilization back to 100% , I call to support , support person kill all processes on my PC and disk back to normal work , but after restart issue come back . I started to delete all my programs one by one , when I deleted Norton antivirus (it was pre-installe on PC) disk back to normal work .
I did rollback to all changes and still have a good disk utilization . Then I contacted to HP support, answer was do not use Norton .

 

[M4DCRUSH3R]

any antivirus does this

 

[ggoldenb]

any antivirus does this

HP recommended windows defender , I never used it so don't know how it is good or not

 

[M4DCRUSH3R]

It does

 

[tomachoj]

Hi,

I have been searching for a solution for over a month now and have finally solved the issue:

Go to charms bar and press search, then type view local services.
Once here, stop and disable BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). Also, set windows update checks to manual.
Chrome also seemed to be a factor so uninstall that too.

I hope this helps you out

 

[tomachoj]

Hi,

I have been searching for a solution for over a month now and have finally solved the issue:

Go to charms bar and press search, then type view local services.
Once here, stop and disable BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). Also, set windows update checks to manual.
Chrome also seemed to be a factor so uninstall that too.

I hope this helps you out

 

[tomachoj]

THIS WORKS!! I'm know nothing about computers; I'm afraid to "run" anything, as well as to go on as administrator. I disabled bits, like numair said. Disk down to 1-2%. I turned bits back on-- stayed at under 10% EXCELLENT! So EASY! Thanks!

 

[David Br]

Well after 2 weeks of dealing with this garbage type problem and trying all the solutions, I realized that every time I use windows media player my disk goes to 100% but when I "end task" it, it goes back to like 0%. Thought I'd share since not everyone has the same solution. Hope it helps someone.

 

[M4DCRUSH3R]

Well after 2 weeks of dealing with this garbage type problem and trying all the solutions, I realized that every time I use windows media player my disk goes to 100% but when I "end task" it, it goes back to like 0%. Thought I'd share since not everyone has the same solution. Hope it helps someone.

It is because you are reading a large file...

 

[wms]

Hi,

I have been searching for a solution for over a month now and have finally solved the issue:

Go to charms bar and press search, then type view local services.
Once here, stop and disable BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). Also, set windows update checks to manual.
Chrome also seemed to be a factor so uninstall that too.

I hope this helps you out

That worked for me! Thanks!

 

[Arpan Parui]

I have looked at several different system that had disk usage near 100% Problem is that each one ended up having a different cause so it is hard to say what the fix would be. But I can give you some ideas to help isolate the cause down.

You start task manager, select the performance tab, open resource monitor, select disk tab

then open a cmd.exe as a admin (windows key+x+a)
now you stop various suspected services and watch how the system responds in resouce monitor.
for example:
net.exe stop superfetch (hit enter and see if your disk usage goes down after a min or two)
net.exe stop "Windows search"

I mention these two because I have seen disk corruptions that made these two services go nuts and take 100% disk bandwidth

I have also seen tasks in the task scheduler that did the same thing until you killed the task.

in all the cases you had to find out the cause of the problem and fix it and the service then worked as expected.

for example, one case had a filesystem corruption that made a loop in the directory structure such that when windows or any program scanning the files would never end and just continue scanning the same set of files forever. In one case it was building a search index and the database just kept growing and growing in size until all of the hard drive was used.

in most cases all you need to do is run cmd.exe as a admin then
chkdsk.exe /f /r on your drives and the condition that causes the problem gets fixed

there are also conditions where windows 8.1 will really use your disk while it is attempting to relocate data off of bad spots on your disk drives.
older versions of windows did not do this. windows 8 will attempt to read data from your disk drive even if you have not requested it. It is looking for errors during the read process so it can locate bad sectors before your data is lost. It will read, if it gets a read error, it will read the spot over and over and try to get a clean copy of the data, it will then move the data to a new good spot on the drive and mark the old spot as bad.

This process can take days on some drives and your system will seem to be at 100% disk used for no apparent reason. It will take much longer on a laptop it the laptop is allowed to sleep. This process is needed because a lot of OEMs do not format and install the os, they just plop a entire OS image on a drive with the assumption that all sectors of the drive are ok.

(I guess that is another point, turn your system to high performance and let it run at idle overnight and see if the disk is at 100% usage in the morning)

- there are also software bugs that will peg your disk access at 100 % but these almost always end up being bugs in 3rd party drivers. It is not because microsoft makes great drivers, it is because microsoft has windows update and when a microsoft driver breaks they get 100,000 automatic bug reports and then they put a fix in the windows update and you download the update and don't ever hit the problem. When the bug is in a 3rd party driver microsoft still gets the 100,000 bug reports but they tell the vendor of the driver, that vendor makes a fix and puts it on their website. Now you have to hit the bug, figure out the problem is caused by the vendor, look at the vendors website and hope they put the fix there. Not a fun process. After years of this problems and updates I find that about 95% of the problems are in 3rd party drivers, and you just have to figure out which one.

sorry if this is not so helpful, it is hard to figure out some problems when you can not actually get your hands on the system.

 

[Arpan Parui]

Thanks johnbl your suggestion was indeed helpful!

 

[Seraph Brah]

Hi,

I have been searching for a solution for over a month now and have finally solved the issue:

Go to charms bar and press search, then type view local services.
Once here, stop and disable BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). Also, set windows update checks to manual.
Chrome also seemed to be a factor so uninstall that too.

I hope this helps you out

You need a medal. This worked instantly. Why the hell does BITS take so much disk usage? Insane. Thank you so much for the fix

 

[GauravGJ]

Hi,

I have been searching for a solution for over a month now and have finally solved the issue:

Go to charms bar and press search, then type view local services.
Once here, stop and disable BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). Also, set windows update checks to manual.
Chrome also seemed to be a factor so uninstall that too.

I hope this helps you out

THANKS A LOT! This solution works perfectly. I used to have 100% Disk Usage all the time that resulted in white screens and very slow response.After disabling BITS, the usage reduced to a single digit. Thank You!

 

[Hoardware]

Set virtual memory to custom size, equal to 1.5 times your actual memory. For example, 4 GB of actual ram, set virtual memory paging file to 6 GB minimum, and 6 GB maximum.

In my case, I tried every other solution described, but nothing else worked. ASUS laptop with 4 GB of RAM showed 100% disk use ALL the time, with about 50% of that by System. Interestingly, nothing else added up to nearly 100%. Nothing was being used, except idle processes, and the MB transfer rate was not even that high, yet HDD showed 100% regardless, never going below that. The automatic system-selected paging file was about 980 MB. The laptop was so ridiculously slow, it was completely unusable. I thought it might be hardware failure, such as the HDD itself.

The moment (after agonizing clicks and 5 min waits just to be able to get to virtual memory preferences) I changed virtual memory size as described above and restarted, the laptop is back to normal operation, and the disk usage no longer shows 100%, but hovers near 0% except when applications cause a momentary spike.

 

[nitulshah]

Hi,

I have been searching for a solution for over a month now and have finally solved the issue:

Go to charms bar and press search, then type view local services.
Once here, stop and disable BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service). Also, set windows update checks to manual.
Chrome also seemed to be a factor so uninstall that too.

I hope this helps you out

Thank you so much.
I disabled BITS. I hope that alone solves the problem. May I know how to update checks to normal.
I agree Chrome doesn't work well in 8.1.

 

[w90]

thanks BITS solution worked

 

[hmoniv]

I have looked at several different system that had disk usage near 100% Problem is that each one ended up having a different cause so it is hard to say what the fix would be. But I can give you some ideas to help isolate the cause down.

You start task manager, select the performance tab, open resource monitor, select disk tab

then open a cmd.exe as a admin (windows key+x+a)
now you stop various suspected services and watch how the system responds in resouce monitor.
for example:
net.exe stop superfetch (hit enter and see if your disk usage goes down after a min or two)
net.exe stop "Windows search"

I mention these two because I have seen disk corruptions that made these two services go nuts and take 100% disk bandwidth

I have also seen tasks in the task scheduler that did the same thing until you killed the task.

in all the cases you had to find out the cause of the problem and fix it and the service then worked as expected.

for example, one case had a filesystem corruption that made a loop in the directory structure such that when windows or any program scanning the files would never end and just continue scanning the same set of files forever. In one case it was building a search index and the database just kept growing and growing in size until all of the hard drive was used.

in most cases all you need to do is run cmd.exe as a admin then
chkdsk.exe /f /r on your drives and the condition that causes the problem gets fixed

there are also conditions where windows 8.1 will really use your disk while it is attempting to relocate data off of bad spots on your disk drives.
older versions of windows did not do this. windows 8 will attempt to read data from your disk drive even if you have not requested it. It is looking for errors during the read process so it can locate bad sectors before your data is lost. It will read, if it gets a read error, it will read the spot over and over and try to get a clean copy of the data, it will then move the data to a new good spot on the drive and mark the old spot as bad.

This process can take days on some drives and your system will seem to be at 100% disk used for no apparent reason. It will take much longer on a laptop it the laptop is allowed to sleep. This process is needed because a lot of OEMs do not format and install the os, they just plop a entire OS image on a drive with the assumption that all sectors of the drive are ok.

(I guess that is another point, turn your system to high performance and let it run at idle overnight and see if the disk is at 100% usage in the morning)

- there are also software bugs that will peg your disk access at 100 % but these almost always end up being bugs in 3rd party drivers. It is not because microsoft makes great drivers, it is because microsoft has windows update and when a microsoft driver breaks they get 100,000 automatic bug reports and then they put a fix in the windows update and you download the update and don't ever hit the problem. When the bug is in a 3rd party driver microsoft still gets the 100,000 bug reports but they tell the vendor of the driver, that vendor makes a fix and puts it on their website. Now you have to hit the bug, figure out the problem is caused by the vendor, look at the vendors website and hope they put the fix there. Not a fun process. After years of this problems and updates I find that about 95% of the problems are in 3rd party drivers, and you just have to figure out which one.

sorry if this is not so helpful, it is hard to figure out some problems when you can not actually get your hands on the system.

Thanks you johnbl for the excellent write-up. My brand-new win 8.1 desktop was spending over 10 minutes after boot-up with disk activity near 100%. I ran chkdsk using switches you suggested. System stayed at 10% mark for over 2 hours. Finally before the 3rd hour started it completed and the boot sequence no longer has the high disk activity. For reference this was on a 1 TB SSD Hybrid drive (HP Pavillion all-in-one).

 

[tightwaddad]

I started having a problem with the disk running at 100% a couple months ago. After searching through related threads, I figured out that my problem was OneDrive related. Each time I stopped the OneDrive Sync Engine, the Disk percent would normally make a dramatic drop within a minute. I turned it back on, so I could get most of my files backed up, until I come up with a better (inexpensive and simple) back up solution.

My files, finally, finished syncing to OneDrive, this morning. I restarted my laptop. The Disk stayed at 100% for about several minutes. During this time, the OneDrive displayed as starting up. Once OneDrive finished starting up, the Disk percent dropped again. It is now running in single digits, with the occasional jump to about the 40 to 50% range.

I thought OneDrive (personal) and OneDrive for Business (college) were great ideas. But, until all of the files sync up, the upload time is horrendous.

 

[pgpaddu]

thanks
Its working 100%

 

[Mulli]

Adobe search service wasmy problem

 

[Syed Raza]

press
Windows+R
Write services.msc in the Run
Disable/close following by right clicking:
1-Super fetch
2-Windows Search
And It Will Work Great!