Question Windows Crashes, frequent windows repair screen, and high disk usage during startup...

WarHawkCy

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Nov 9, 2015
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Now before i begin i want to say this might take a fair while to fix or read, so if you do not have the time, feel free to avoid this. I am pretty desperate though, so i fyou have some extra time please help lol...

I have a pc that isn't particularly old or new, most of the components are new and others 3-5 years old...

Now, i've had problems for a fair amount of time, and i'm not sure about all the details because i never saw them as massive problems and just brushed them off. I want to address each and everyone of the ones i can remember to try and fix my overall pc, because lately the pc has been getting out of hand when it comes to slow, crashing, automatic repair screens and etc.

So the one current problem i'm facing is an automatic repair screen. I used a restore point which granted me access to my pc again, but then again i shutdown my pc, and next day i turn it on and it's showing me an automatic repair screen again (during me writing this post the pc randomly decided to not show me automatic repair, after i did nothing to it, and launched normally), i don't have any helpful info about this, but thats all i know.

Now i can tell you the past and current problems i'm facing that'll maybe help add up the other problems.
I also keep getting very slow windows boot up, maybe 1-2 minutes with a 7200rpm hard drive, that is pretty spacious when it comes to size. What i've noticed is that in Taskmanager the disk % is always at 100% during boot up, there is no particular task that eats up the disk usage but sometimes i see malware executable or something similar... it's pretty random.

I recently changed power supply and pc case, so i had to re-arrange wires(since i thought maybe the problems was the cables i switched my two hdd cables and they performed the same as previous), so i'm thinking the wires or sata cables etc. aren't the issue.

From what i rememeber the windows version i have is most likely pirated or cracked or some sort of unofficial windows ( i didn't pay extra for windows, which makes me think it's unoffial), because i didn't set the pc up, someone else did it for me as i didn't know much of pc's back then...

The hdd usage issue, if i can remember correctly happened on my old hard drive(not sure about this), that i now use as a secondary file hard drive, yet i'm experiencing this hdd issue or just slowness in general with my current new hdd (maybe 2 years old?)

I've ran ram error checkers and found no problems, i've ran disk error checkers and again found no problems, i've ran multiple antiviruses and again found no problems.

Now, i have no idea if this can be a motherboard issue, but the motherboard is fairly new, maybe 1-2yrs old, it was used when i bought it but it was in good condition and not used much...

Now going back to the anti-malware executable disk usage error, i do see anti-malware frequently in Windows Problem reports with a summary of MpTelemetry along with other tasks/software errors, i don't know if these are necessary to fix the automatic repair screen, but i did see during an automatic repair screen saying something similar to "STATUS IMAGE CHECKSUM MISMATCH" or "The Header Checksum For This File Does Not Match The Computed Checksum winload.exe", even though it showed an error for winload.exe, the pc launched as i said during writing this post, so my thoughts are all conflicted lmao.

PS: I Tested running safe mode, yet it's still as slow maybe a little faster.


Man... any help or just taking the time to read is a massive thank you from me <3


Windows

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.17763 Build 17763
System Type x64-based PC

CPU (3 yrs old)
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6600K CPU @ 3.50GHz, 3501 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

Ram (3yrs old)

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 15.9 GB
Available Physical Memory 12.6 GB
Total Virtual Memory 19.6 GB
Available Virtual Memory 14.1 GB
Page File Space 3.75 GB

GPU (months old)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
Resolution 1920 x 1080 x 60 hertz

Intel(R) HD Graphics 530

Hard Drives (D,E are partitions, not too knowledged of what partitions are...) (Drive C is 2yrs old and windows boot. Drive F is 5yrs old)

Drive C:
Description Local Fixed Disk
File System NTFS
Size 1.82 TB (1,999,820,025,856 bytes)
Free Space 1.37 TB (1,506,180,730,880 bytes)

Drive D:
Description Local Fixed Disk
File System NTFS
Size 100.00 MB (104,853,504 bytes)
Free Space 62.46 MB (65,499,136 bytes)
Volume Name System Reserved

Drive E:
Description Local Fixed Disk
File System NTFS
Size 100.00 MB (104,853,504 bytes)
Free Space 62.63 MB (65,671,168 bytes)
Volume Name System Reserved

Drive F:
Description Local Fixed Disk
File System NTFS
Size 930.97 GB (999,625,322,496 bytes)
Free Space 538.40 GB (578,104,635,392 bytes)
Volume Name 1

Current Antivirus
Malwarebytes Free
 
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PC Tailor

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Are you able to access the PC at all now?
High disk usage on startup is pretty normal - especially if you have antivirus running.

May be worth running crystaldiskinfo just to check the integrity of your drives themselves.
Won't hurt to try and run SFC and DISM too first.

The STATUS IMAGE CHECKSUM MISMATCH is usually an OS or driver error. So the above may help first. A fresh install of windows would hopefully rectify the issue if all else fails.
 

WarHawkCy

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Nov 9, 2015
13
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4,510
Are you able to access the PC at all now?
High disk usage on startup is pretty normal - especially if you have antivirus running.

May be worth running crystaldiskinfo just to check the integrity of your drives themselves.
Won't hurt to try and run SFC and DISM too first.

The STATUS IMAGE CHECKSUM MISMATCH is usually an OS or driver error. So the above may help first. A fresh install of windows would hopefully rectify the issue if all else fails.

Hey, thanks for the reply i really appreciate it and sorry for the slow answer.

Yes, i am able to use my pc now. No more automatic repair screens so far...

I know you said high disk usage is normal but it seems off to me since it stays 100% for a good 5-10 minutes and the avg response time is really high, like maybe 500-1000ms then it slowly goes down. Now i'm seeing that sometimes the service host sysmain uses that disk usage, as i said it's pretty random...

I'm not sure if i stated that i already did disk error checkups but, i already used crystaldiskinfo, but just to be sure i used it again, and got these results View: https://i.imgur.com/ieHLQjH.png


I did multiple SFC scans and i followed a website guide on how to use DISM and i used it a couple of times, not sure if DISM succeeded cause the finishing message is hard to understand, also the sfc scans found nothing...

I also want to state that i've done maybe 2-3 resets on this pc, now i'm not sure if when you reset it uses the same windows when i started meaning i would get the same windows errors even after a reset, but i'll wait for an answer and judge if i'll need to use a media creation tool and reset it, but we'll see....

AGAIN Thank you so much for the reply, i really appreciate it!
 

PC Tailor

Illustrious
Ambassador
Open resource monitor when you start your PC and check what background services and processes are using up all the resource. I would hedge my bets on windows updates and antivirus usually.

Other considerations if you haven't already
  • Get latest windows updates and install
  • Ensure you have latest drivers installed as far as possible for all devices
  • Can you give us a log / image of the DISM results - they may be in event viewer.
 

WarHawkCy

Reputable
Nov 9, 2015
13
0
4,510
Open resource monitor when you start your PC and check what background services and processes are using up all the resource. I would hedge my bets on windows updates and antivirus usually.

Other considerations if you haven't already
  • Get latest windows updates and install
  • Ensure you have latest drivers installed as far as possible for all devices
  • Can you give us a log / image of the DISM results - they may be in event viewer.


I just got the latest updates and installed yet still is slow, also just noticed but i clicked check updates after installing updates and restarting pc and it seems to have more updates, idk if that's a bug, cause i would have thought it'd mass install all the updates or something, hopefully it's not a bug but a possible fix lol.

All my drivers seem to be updated...

I can give a log sure, but i got this from /windows/logs/dism since i couldn't find anything in event viewer and i got the log of when i did the dism cmd stuff, but i'm not sure if it's the correct one.

I opened resource monitor at launch and i'm not sure what i should look at, so i sorted by response time, cause some processes and others seemed to be very slow.


-- Resource Monitor Pics (2 pics and dism log under) --
View: https://i.imgur.com/BhSp0bV.png

View: https://i.imgur.com/F9jHsag.png


-- Dism Log (couldn't fit) --
https://txt.online-reader.com/view?f=sYbql
 

PC Tailor

Illustrious
Ambassador
You'll want to sort it by disk usage.
If you have more updates, you've probably got a big backlog, it can't just bulk install all updates, because many updates require the previous one as a prerequisite to install.
Get all of your windows updates on first.

How full is your storage drive? Have you run cleanup/defrag at all?
 

WarHawkCy

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Nov 9, 2015
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4,510
You'll want to sort it by disk usage.
If you have more updates, you've probably got a big backlog, it can't just bulk install all updates, because many updates require the previous one as a prerequisite to install.
Get all of your windows updates on first.

How full is your storage drive? Have you run cleanup/defrag at all?

So i don't see any obvious "Disk usage" Column, so i assumed it was the total bytes column.

Turns out i only had 2 updates backlogged or whatever, same performance...

Storage drive is 1.44TB free of 1.81TB, and yes i have done several cleanups and defrags, in fact i got them scheduled.

Also i'm not sure i addressed this but with the "general slowness" that i said, it's usually when i first launch anything in general, so like the bottom left search function needs like 10 seconds to unfreeze and actually start taking input, file explorer needs a while to start working better, it's just general slowness, i have no idea what this is.

-- Resource Monitor Pics --
View: https://i.imgur.com/O2NkCpg.png

View: https://i.imgur.com/ekOTOYV.png
 

PC Tailor

Illustrious
Ambassador
Understood - well from initial looks, i'd either be pointing at storage or RAM - you indicated that in safe mode it was not really in any way improved. Which usually means a problem with the core OS or potentially hardware not playing nice. You already stipulated you've done some resets and various CMD checks, so OS is becoming less likely.

Have you tried a clean install entirely, as opposed to just a reset?
Equally, I'm calling into question your RAM, as this can equally cause large slowdowns in the manner that you describe.

It might not add any value, but it might point out something obvious if you run this benchmark here and post a link to the results.
In the meantime, you may want to run a memtest also just to verify their is nothing overly obviously going wrong with the RAM.
 

WarHawkCy

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Nov 9, 2015
13
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4,510
Understood - well from initial looks, i'd either be pointing at storage or RAM - you indicated that in safe mode it was not really in any way improved. Which usually means a problem with the core OS or potentially hardware not playing nice. You already stipulated you've done some resets and various CMD checks, so OS is becoming less likely.

Have you tried a clean install entirely, as opposed to just a reset?
Equally, I'm calling into question your RAM, as this can equally cause large slowdowns in the manner that you describe.

It might not add any value, but it might point out something obvious if you run this benchmark here and post a link to the results.
In the meantime, you may want to run a memtest also just to verify their is nothing overly obviously going wrong with the RAM.

I'm not really well educated on this subject but i think i just did normal resets, so no i think i didn't do a clean install.

Just finished the memtest 0 errors detected....

ALSO, another thing i noticed is that whenever i launch my pc, sometimes it doesn't send a signal at all to my monitor and i can't do anything except restart it and hope it'll work...

ALSO ALSO, at startup i get a "CPU FAN SPEED ERROR DETECTED", yet the cpu fan is running smoothly as it ever could and the temps are fine, i replaced cpu replaced fan and again same thing....




-- Userbenchmark --
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/15994102

PS: The gpu was an error of the detection software, it performs as expected. Not that it adds anything to what i'm experiencing but just wanted to clarify...
 
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