System Hang On C Drive

I seem to have an intermittent problem with my system. Since the February Tuesday Patch Update, the system will seem to hang processing keyboard or mouse commands. If you try to execute a second activity before the prior activity is completed, the system will hang for many minutes and all during that time, the C drive will be 100% active even if it isn't reading or writing anything and the response times will be over 2,000 ms. Task Manager doesn't show any process hogging the drive. I have run the troubleshooting routine with nothing identified as wrong and Device manager states the drive is operating with no problems. I have been running backups of user files to a USB drive with no issues. I also ran dynamic file history to an internal HDD with no issues. Sometimes an application will generate a not responsive message, but left alone the app. eventually continues on. The driver for the C drive is listed as current. The system is circa 2009 and was a W7 originally and updated to W10 when the free update period was about to end. I'm currently copying the contents of the C drive to an external USB drive as an additional backup and I have a current MR system image on another USB drive. This morning when I booted the system, there was a boot message that the drive was not available and to press the space bar to continue. The first time the spinning disk was turning so slowly, it was multiple seconds between each dot moving. After many minutes, I forced a power off and then restarted the system. I got the drive not responding message again, but this time the system booted normally. I'm at a loss on what else to try and open to guidance. Since the CPU is not able to support W11, replacement is likely anyway, and not I'm turning the machine off.

Failing drive ? Try a new SSD with a clean install.

Note : non-compliant hardware is not a barrier to Win 11

I ended "Microsoft Windows Search Indexer" and the constant 100% active state of the C drive returned to normal activity. Now looking at "COM Surrogate " as it's monopolizing the disk, but not like MWSI process was. The only active applications running are Windows Explorer that is copying the C drive to a backup disk, Task Manager, and Norton 360.

It may be a drive issue.
Lets do the basic.
Open a CMD window as administrator and type:
chkdsk c: /f
It will say your disk is in use and ask if you want to schedule to next start = yes
Restart
Pay attention on the results, specially bad blocks, bad clusters, bad sectors etc

Back to Windows, open a CMD window as administrator and type:
sfc /scannow

If it finds any corrupted files, fixing or not, reboot and run again

Then run
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
and
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Download, extract and run Crystal disk Info. It is a portable, don't need to install

Ran CHKDSK and it finished with corrupted files fixed.
Ran SFC and it found and repaired corrupted files.
Booted system and ran SFC and it found no problems.
Ran DISM scanhealth and it detected corruption.
Ran DISM repairhealth and it completed successfully.
I have disabled Microsoft Windows Search Indexer at startup since it appeared to be hanging the drive at 100%.
System seems to be running normally now. We'll see after another bootup. I'm still thinking about uninstalling the February Patch Tuesday CUM as that's when the issue started. If it corrupted things, did the DISMs fix it since they run the Windows Module Install Worker process just like Windows Update does with regular updates?

Did you run CrystalDiskInfo ?
Is the main drive a SSD?

No Didn't get to the crystalsiskinfo yet and the drive is a 7,200 rpm ATA HDD. Ran out time last night.

It is time to give your computer a super boost.
As you have a desktop you can install a small (128G) SSD for windows and programs and use the HDD for data only. It will cost you about US$ 20.
It will boot in seconds rather than minutes and open programs at a blink of an eye.

This video is from a 12 years old i3, 4 G of memory that I installed a 128G SSD and use the HDD for data only.

OK, ChrystalDiskInfo identifies one reallocated sector and it has 63,000 hours on it. System seems to be running like normal. It's 14 years old, originally a W7 system and the mother board won't support TPPS. Not putting any money into it. Time for a new system. Will be looking at either a new tower or a laptop with a docking station or a powered USB station to support the plethora of USB peripherals we have.

Note: search indexing normally only hangs like that if there's an underlying problem with the disk or file system.

On a normally functioning system it imposes no noticeable overhead.