Troubleshooting Hardware & Devices says Restart your PC... forever

xrbbaker · 09 Aug 2017

I'm trying to troubleshoot why my C drive runs all of the time. As part of that attempt, I run Troubleshooting and select Hardware and Devices. It states that it made changes and I need to "Restart your PC to finish installing drivers and updates." I do this and then run Troubleshooter again and select Hardware and Devices. It says same thing every time.

I've modified the MSCONFIG to get a clean boot and run it again. Same thing. It still asks me to restart the PC. Any ideas on what is going on?

Thank you

dalchina · 09 Aug 2017

why my C drive runs all of the time

Hi, could you clarify that? Do you mean you see a lot of read/write activity to the drive?

Could you post a screenshot of your task manager like this just to give an initial view:

Troubleshooting Hardware & Devices says Restart your PC... forever-1.jpg

Click on Disk to organise that column high to low.

To post a screenshot please use the Insert Image icon above your post to the left of the video icon. Thanks.

Please also advise what sort of disks you have. (see my specs below for comparison).

xrbbaker · 09 Aug 2017

Well of course now it seems to be a bit better. :) All morning I heard the drive thrashing around. This, while everything I clicked on had a several second delay. Drag a screen... wait. Click a tab... wait. I tried several things, including moving my virtual memory from my main hard drive to my secondary hard drive. The task manager seems to show the disk running at around 50%, however if I flip over to the performance tab, it shows the C drive running much higher. See second pic. Typically it shows at 100%. It's a bit less than that now. Maybe some of my changes made a difference? Maybe not.

Thanks for the help.

Troubleshooting Hardware & Devices says Restart your PC... forever-image.png

dalchina · 09 Aug 2017

Hi, ok, so it's something to do with a Windows update. There's no network activity, so no downloads.

Disk usage is worryingly high, but your RAM is ok, so shouldn't be page file related.

I would start by running a test on your disk-however, there's the slight problem of the usage.

Anyway, download and run Hard Disk Sentinel (trial) and post a screenshot of its GUI.
If normal mode won't work, it might work in Safe Mode.

Notice the very low transfer rate....

xrbbaker · 09 Aug 2017

Hi Dalchina,

I've been away for a few hours. Check it out now. It's purring like a kitten. Is it possible that, as you say, there was a Windows update that was just running for hours and hours? It sure seems like I have my pc back - AND I went in to MSCONFIG and put it back to normal startup, started the antivirus, etc. Sure seems like something isn't eating my machine anymore...

Thank you

dalchina · 09 Aug 2017

Hi, nonetheless, there's no way disk usage should be so high, and for so long- and at what seems a low transfer rate. Best to check.

1. Download and run Hard Disk Sentinel (trial) and post a screenshot of its GUI.
2. Download and run Crystal Diskmark and run the benchmark.
Here's mine on my hard drive.

xrbbaker · 09 Aug 2017

Cool! I'm anxious to try that. I'm heading out the door for some R&R. Back Sunday night. I'll jump back into this on my return Monday. Thanks so much!

Russ

xrbbaker · 14 Aug 2017

Dalchina,

The sentinel has a comment about a weak sector, but doesn't seem overly concerned. How do these numbers look to you? ...and again thanks very much for the help!

dalchina · 14 Aug 2017

Originally you said you had trouble when restarting your PC- try that again.

Please post a screenshot of your Update History.

Physically your drive seems ok. However there are quite a number of reports if you look for them where disk usage in practice-particularly related to updates- seems poor, but Crystal Diskmark figures look good, and like yours in #3 show 100% usage at low transfer rates.

This indicates a resource bottleneck.

See this thread and read the links I posted in #11
Repeated Crashes and Boot Errors Apparently Caused by Driver Updates - Windows 10 Forums

I'm away for 12 days or so - like you, at last a holiday; hopefully you can research further or someone will come along with a bright idea.

xrbbaker · 14 Aug 2017

Interesting. My update history is just about blank.

However, if I go to Control Panel, there are clearly many, and recent updates.