Disk I/O FUBARed by update

Everything was more or less okay with my Win10 laptop for 1.5 years. Then suddenly after the .5GB cumulative update from April for my already installed 2004, these problems arose:
-disk usage is almost always 100%. Transfer rate is usually low, as <50KB/s. 'System' (PID4) is at the top almost always, then whatever else is next varies from Registry to Sysmain to Diagnostic Policy to Defrag and so on.
-the laptop often freezes up for 10 seconds to 10-30 minutes. Triggers might be scrolling a web page, starting or closing any program, right-clicking to get a context menu, etc. The freeze-ups appear to partly be because windows can't get at the pagefile quickly; e.g. ResMon shows Response Time of 10,000ms and so a delay occurred of 10 seconds for some trivial task.
-it's looking as if the update somehow really really dislikes Firefox, as I can reproduce the problem consistently by opening many FF tabs - yet many many Edge tabs don't cause a problem.
-even so, without FF running, sfc /scannow now running alone takes well over an hour to complete whereas it was 20 minutes previously. Task Manager might show rates of 18MB/s on the 1TB HDD. Then the Installer Worker goes idle for long periods; but usage is 100%.
-without FF running, installing the latest .5GB security fix last week took eleven hours, using an already downloaded catalog msu.
-the bad behaviour exists even on a clean profile

-HOWEVER--- making Macrium R7 system images takes only the usual time.

So I can sidestep most of the daily struggle by using Edge instead of FF. But the next WU is bound to take an eternity anyway, as does installing any program whatsoever.

I've tried all the usual things. No virus, etc.

I'm guessing a repair install might not help. Is a clean install the only avenue?

I would suspect a failing HDD.

Hi there

@Bob1212

As a test try creating a Windows2Go on an external SSD connected to the computer via USB3/USBC->SATA connector. A cheap 250GB ssd would be fine for this - then boot from it -- This won't touch any internal HDD's at all and if it boots OK and has fast performance then there's a problem with your existing HDD. You can create a WintoGo usb device using any version of Windows for free - just takes a bit of time and it's great to have a completely external bootable windows system as a toolset too.

To do this :

Pre-reqs - -- preferably an SSD connected to a USB 3/3.1/USBC connector via SATA->USB adapter. USB2 works but with USB3 and above and a decent SSD type device the performance will be almost as good as Native (and certainly better if the internal OS is running on a "spinner" type HDD).

You will also need a Windows install ISO - get either from UUPDUMP or MCT tool and of course a running version of Windows.

Unlike Wintousb etc this method doesn't nag to "keep USB plugged in" --it doesn't even know that it's running on a USB device and windows can be updated to newer versions without any problem -- I find using this much better than continually updating a Windows "internal" drive. Having say some spare USB's over you can make several Windows versions to play and test with.

One restriction - this method gives you a "Clean install" . You can capture the image from your exiting Windows but since your current Windows system isn't working properly I'd advise the clean install on to a USB device as a Win2GO system.

This is a full running system on external USB, it's not a "Windows install system" !!!

so assuming you have the Windows iso and a spare ssd external USB drive

target Windows partition -> drive W
target EFI partition -> drive S
Source windows iso image drive Q

i've put quotes around the dism commands to stop "smiley's" being generated in the command lines.

1) create EFI partition

in administrator mode : -- diskpart,list disk select disk nn clean convert gpt, create partition efi size 250
format fs=fat32
assign letter=S

2) create Windows target partition -- still in diskpart create partition primary, format fs=ntfs quick
assign letter=W, exit

3) mount the windows iso -- simply click on the iso with file explorer -- will mount - here I assume it's Q

4) you might have more than one windows image on the iso - especially if you created the iso from UUPDUMP so you need to display what windows versions are on the iso image :

"dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:Q:\sources\install.wim"
in my case it shows that windows for workstations has index 2 so that's the version I'll use on WTG drive

5) use dism to get the image on to the target drive

"dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:Q:\sources\install.wim /Index:2 /ApplyDir:W:"

On a decent SSD could take around 10 mins for this step

5) now create the boot entry on the target drive in the UEFI :

W:\Windows\System32\bcdboot W:\Windows /f UEFI /s S:

note - you must run this command using the program from the image copied to the target Windows drive--not your running Windows system or the mounted iso.

Now all done -- simply re-boot your external Windows to Go drive - install and update at will.

I also created a physical WintoGO USB from a Windows 10 Virtual Machine running KVM/QEMU on a Linux system. This VM had all my installed software etc and works fine but quite complex in the end.

The thread is here : but "not for the unwary" -- Fun to play with and great to have a useful WintoGo system with all software installed and all email accounts working properly etc.

capture WIM image of KVM W10 VM for convert to physical (V2P)


Cheers
jimbo