High Disk Usage in Windows 8

Hi,
I upgraded to Windows 8 a few months ago with a clean install. Around a month ago, my computer started to freeze up and experience huge slow-downs. Trying to open the Task Manager can take minutes of waiting. When it does open, the physical drive/disk usage (not CPU) for the "System" is 99% or 100%. The "details" tab again shows a process labeled "system" which leads to ntoskrnl.exe in the System32 folder.

I was worried about malware being the problem, but posted in the malware forum here--everything checked out okay.

Any ideas why this program, which from Google sounds like the trigger of the BSOD, might be running at such a high disk usage? Or is something else the problem? Thanks for any help with this!

 

micnike1...

This should take you right to the problem folder/files:

https://www.jam-software.de/custome...guage=EN&PHPSESSID=lhjqrkqfcqi7nmlbmpmbcitgn0

Didn't see it here at MG. If your PC is running slowly, it might take a while for the scan to run, but it will show you how your disk usage is allocated very clearly...

 

Read this, http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/files/ntoskrnl/22115/

 

Hi AtlBo, thanks for the response. I use a tool similar to this (WinDirStat). As far as I can tell, TreeSize is a similar tool. I don't think that the problem I am having relates to open disk space.

From the Task Manager, the measure of "Disk" usage is the percentage of time that is spent processing read or write requests. Unless I'm missing something, I don't think that TreeSize helps analyze this. Any advice? Thanks.

 

Hey Nick T, thanks for the info. From here, it doesn't seem like it should be doing a lot of read/write actions. Any idea why it would be taking up 99% of the available read/write actions sometimes in Windows 8? Thanks.

 

Apologies...thought you meant you have a hard drive that was acting up...

Do you see System Idle Process in Task Manager? Just making sure you aren't confusing System and System Idle Process. SIP is a readiness process...

This might help:

http://www.oocities.org/mark_gamez/System_process_at_99_pct.html

This PC is extremely ancient in this artcile, but the problem was the heat sink fan...

Try shutting down your A-V/firewall for a short time...

 

More information:

The troubleshooting guide is the bottom post on the right side. Looks like this is fairly common with W8:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/feed/t/9c87226d-822b-4b5f-87e9-560094a76d9e

 

Yeah, after Googling, I figured out the difference. But, here, the problem is the 99% usage of the "System" process, not the idle time shown by SIP.

In addition, the "Service Host: Local System (Network Restricted)(10)" group of tasks also seems to take a 90-100% usage of the read and write ability of the disk on my computer sometimes. Maybe this is related somehow to the System process?

 

Yes, I think they are all related. Some process is hijacking the system processes more than likely.

I think the troubleshooting steps are mostly to trial and error to determine which process is the problem. This method mentioned looks like it's primarily for checking out system services. That's kind of interesting for an MS tech to say he thinks it's likely an MS service, I guess. You can apply the same procedure to startup programs.

Have you tried turning off the A-V/firewall? Might be a good idea to try that first...

 

Hey, a lot of things going on. Hopefully I'll work through the Microsoft Answers troubleshooting tonight...It's funny that it seems a lot of people have this problem in Windows 8. I'll go through the clean booting/troubleshooting that they suggest and see if I can work anything out.

I haven't tried anything with disabling/changing AV software. I'll try that beforehand and see if I run into any more freezes.

Thanks for the help--if I find out anything more, I'll update here.

 

OK...yes, please post what you come up with...

 

hi micnike1,

any update on this issue?
i'm too having the same problem with high disk utilization in my new lenovo y410p laptop with a fresh copy of window 8.
by Google around, it seems that same problem happen in other brand of laptop with window 8 as well.

this problem causing me to have symptom like all kind of actions (mouse not moving, keyboard not working & etc) freeze suddenly & resume within 1-5 seconds. no gaming nor heavy usage at the time when it freeze.

this is very annoying.

 

Hi.. i bought lenovo z500 2 months back.. i am facing same problem too.. suddenly my system became too slow and nothing seems working fine and wen i checked in task manager its showing that my disk space is 100% usage. but i cant see anything with high usage. i searched in many forums but haven't got any hint.

Can some one please help on dis..

 

I have no idea what could be causing this, but, when I run a disk eraser to erase all data located in the empty spaces of Windows XP, I notice that my hard drive free space grows smaller and smaller according to Windows as the process wipes the free space. I have been told that is because the wiper replaces the data with 1s and 0s.

I wonder if this has something to do with some sort of cleaning process or maybe the Windows defragmenter. I have had problems before where the main drive would stay at the reported full capacity after the free space was wiped. This has happened to me with CCleaner and with Eraser, and it caused problems with System Restore and also general sluggishness...