100% disk usage after a shut down post-update/restart

Hello.

Can you check if any "updated" driver can be the culprit?

I agree v1803 is one of the worst w10 updates ever.

Open Resource Monitor (you can find it in "Windows Administrative Tools"). Open the "Disk" section. It lists what files are being used and by what program. If the program using a lot of disk access is "System" then it might be difficult to find out the cause. I believe that after an update (especially a major update), Windows goes through a large indexing process. If you have an older slower mechanical drive (not an SSD), this can take a while. If files with high activity have a file name which contains "index", that could be the cause.

JohnD

My laptop is only a year old so far, but it does have a hard drive. And during these peaks “System” and “Registry” are at the top of the active list.

That makes it tough. The System process can be doing a lot. Can you somehow capture what files are being used at that time? Take some screen prints maybe? Last week I updated an older computer to v1803. It took 5 hours. I noticed that for a while after the update it had the 100% disk usage issue, but it has pretty much settled down now. I get a temporary spike after first booting up, but after that it is pretty good (down to 0% to 2%). Just trying it now, I initially did not have it connected to the Internet. Once I plugged it in, the disk usage spiked for about 5 minutes, and then went down to the low rate. I saw a process called "CompatTelRunner" going bonkers for a while. That is one of the Windows 10 Telemetry processes. Once that finished whatever it had to do, things settled down.

What antivirus are you using? That could have an effect on things. I have seen Norton and McAfee bring systems to their knees.

I have seen some comments about the Index file becoming corrupt and causing the 100% disk usage problem. Maybe someone else has some suggestions.

JohnD

johnpd said:

Open Resource Monitor (you can find it in "Windows Administrative Tools"). Open the "Disk" section. It lists what files are being used and by what program. If the program using a lot of disk access is "System" then it might be difficult to find out the cause. I believe that after an update (especially a major update), Windows goes through a large indexing process. If you have an older slower mechanical drive (not an SSD), this can take a while. If files with high activity have a file name which contains "index", that could be the cause.

JohnD

Had something similar yesterday.

Working on laptop when it suddenly ground to halt.
Found out that Windows had started to install updates (set to ask me first but it did not)
After update completed Laptop did not restart properly and disk was 100%.
Shut down and Started again, NOT Restart (it took about an hour).
After second restart everything seemed normal but disk was still 100% and stayed that way for about 6 hours.

Today it is fine!!!.
Does this mean that even though you think the updates are finished it is still happening somewhere in the background?.

It can be that, after you updated to 1803, Windows decided to upgrade to a newer version (1809 or 1903) so it may be downloading the new version or preparing to install it.

Hi Megahertz

Thought of things like that, but when I looked there was nothing to see.
Apart from disk usage everything else was minimal.
See what happens next update.

1. What Windows 10 version are you on now: 1809 or 1903?

2. What antivirus are you using?

3. How much memory does your system have?

4. Do you have a regular mechanical HDD or a SSD?

5. Next time it happens look at Task Manager details and find which process is responsible for all the hard drive activity.

JohnD