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Solved: 100% Disk usage in new laptop running Windows 10

Have you noticed windows 10 freezes and the disk usage goes up to or close to 100% for a few seconds or even for a couple of minutes? Especially after windows update the DIsk or CPU usages very high. Due to the high Disk Usage, Windows 10 system became unresponsive not perform well? There are several things that can cause 100% disk usage in Windows it could be Chrome’s web page prefetch feature, a bug in a Windows driver, virus/malware infection, or some other Windows features. Whatever the reason here are a few workarounds you can try to reduce the disk usage on windows 10.

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Windows 10 100 disk usage

If the very first time noticed this problem windows 10 high usage, turn it off and on again the system. It sounds too simple, but it can often cure issues that you might otherwise spend a long time investigating.

Microsoft regularly releases cumulative updates with various bug fixes and Similar to restarting your PC, you’d be surprised at how effective updating Windows fixes problems.

  1. Open settings using keyboard shortcut Windows + I

  2. Click Update & security than windows update,

  3. Now hit the check for updates button to allow download and install available updates from the Microsoft server.

  4. Once done restart your PC to apply them

Also, install a good antivirus with the latest updates and perform a full system scan to make sure any virus/malware infection not causing the issue.

Start Windows 10 clean boot state to determine if start-up service conflict causing the issue.

Some of users report, Disable windows notifications help to reduce disk usage on windows 10. You can disable windows notifications following the steps below.

  1. Open settings then click system

  2. Here click Notifications and Actions then toggle off get notifications from apps and other senders.

Disable Some Windows features

A few numbers of users confirmed that disabling Windows Search and Background Intelligence Transfer Service fixes this problem.

  1. Press Windows + R, type services.msc, and ok

  2. This will open windows services console,

  3. Scroll down and locate Windows search service, right-click and select properties,

  4. Under the General tab, go to Startup type > set it to Disabled

  5. Stop the service next to service status then hit Apply.

  6. Do the same with SysMain (previously know as Superfetch) and Background Intelligence Transfer Service as well.

Disable windows search service

Use High-Performance Power Plan

With some computers, hard drives are smart and will try to power down or change RPM to save power.

  1. Open Control Panel

  2. Search for and select Power Options

  3. Here make sure you are using a High Performance.

In addition, click on Change plan settings and then expand Turn off hard disk after and set the minutes to 0. This will ensure that the hard disk does not power down or go into the low power state, which can cause the disk usage problem.

turn off hard disk after 0

Check disk for errors

Again if there is something wrong with your disk, obviously you may experience high disk usage problems. Fortunately, you can quickly fix this issue by checking your disk using Command Prompt.

  1. Open the command prompt as administrator,

  2. Type command chkdsk.exe /f /r and hit the enter key,

  3. Then on the next prompt type: Y and hit Enter.

Next this Will Stat scanning and repairing process for Disk Drive Error After 100% Complete Restart windows And check system Running without High Disk Usage.

Run Check disk on Windows 10

Reset Virtual Memory

Windows Automatically usage Disk Drive Space As Virtual Memory (A combination of the disk drive and RAM). If you Recently Customize Virtual memory For windows performance optimization Reset it To Default. Because sometimes the wrong customization also Causes Disk Drive not Responding or 100 percent Disk Usage.

To reset virtual memory to default state:

  1. Press Windows + R, type sysdm.cpl, and hit the enter key,

  2. On System, properties move to the Advanced tab and click Settings under Performance,

  3. Now move to the Advanced tab click on the Change button under Virtual Memory,

  4. Then checkmark on Automatically manage paging file size for all drives,

  5. Click Apply ok and Restart windows to take Effect the Changes.

Automatically manage paging file size

Fix your StorAHCI.sys driver

This is the most effective solution I personally found to fix 100% disk usage in windows 10. The Windows 10 100% disk usage problem might also be caused by some Advanced Host Controller Interface PCI-Express (AHCI PCIe) models running with the inbox  StorAHCI.sys driver due to a firmware bug. Here’s how to determine and fix if this is your problem.

  1. Right-click on the Start menu and select the device manager.

  2. Expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers,

  3. Right-click Standard SATA AHCI Controller and go to Properties.

  4. Now check the Under Driver tab, click Driver Details.

  5. If it shows C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\storahci.sys in the Drivers files field, then you are running the inbox AHCI driver.

AHCI driver (StorAHCL.sys)
  1. Now click OK and go to the Details tab.

  2. Under the property section, Select the Device instance path from the drop-down menu.

  3. And copy the value present there to some text file or keep the box open.

Note: If you find multiple AHCI controllers in IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, copy the AHCI Device Instance path for every one of them and do the following steps for each controller one by one.

Note Down Device instance path

Tweak on Windows registry editor 

Open Windows Registry Editor and navigate the following path.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\<AHCI Controller> \Device Parameters\Interrupt Management\MessageSignaledInterruptProperties.

The <AHCI Controller> here refers to the Value Which you previously noted).

Now on the right pane of MessageSignaledInterruptProperties key, look for the registry DWORD(REG_DWORD) named MSISupported which should be corresponding to Value 1 as its Data. Double-click on the DWORD to modify its value and Set 0 As shown below image.

reg Tweak to Disable MSI Support

Restart your computer after the change, then check your computer’s disk usage: Type “task manager” in the Windows search bar and select Task Manager, then in the Processes tab, look at the % at the top of the Disk column. If it’s no longer 100%, you’ve fixed the problem!

Google chrome causing high disk usage

For some Windows 10 users, a particular combination of Skype and Google Chrome browser settings causes the 100% disk usage problem in Windows 10. Here’s how to fix those settings

Apply on Google chrome

In the case of Google Chrome, the web page pre-load feature is at fault. You can turn it off by visiting chrome://settings > Show Advanced Settings > Privacy. Here, untick the option called Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly.

Applicable for skype high disk usage

  1. Make sure that your Skype is not running.

  2. Then navigate to Windows Explorer, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\.

  3. Here Right-click Skype.exe and select Properties.

  4. Go to the Security tab and select Edit.

  5. Click ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES and tick the Allow checkbox for Write.

  6. Then click Apply, then OK to save your change.

tweak skype to fix 100 disk usage

Restart your PC and check the Disk usage reduced on Windows 10.

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