Chronic 100 percent disk and CPU usage on older hardware

It annoys me that both of these Hitachi HD's for the two roommates' Acer x1300 Slimlines died a week apart during maintenance. Can obsolescence be that planned? But they are attached to the slimline profile that fits neatly on a bookshelf and the kitchen bar.

I'm not signing in either using MS Accounts even though Uncle sync's his personal and work files via Skydrive on all PC's. I want to see how far we can go without having to tether MS accounts since I gave up in a few days and am happy signing in that way.

John, would you want these reports on the eMachine with the Mail app reinstalled which seemed to cause a lot of the thrashing?

Mike, original eMachines used quality parts and lasted 10 years as this one is doing. It was only when Acer bought them that they plunged them into the cheap bargain basement and sullied a good US brand name.



Thanks and Happy New Year, everyone!

I just recalled this from long ago (for the perfmon report):

Just found out I couldn't save a perfmon report in Win8.1!

Worked this out to drag it out of the depths of the OS:

Press Win and R to open the Run dialog
Type in "perfmon" (without the quotes) and press "Enter"

In the left hand pane:
- expand "Data Collector Sets", then expand "System"
- Right click on "System Diagnostics" and select "Start"

Wait until the report shows up in the right hand pane (approximately 60 seconds)
If you're impatient, left click on the latest report in the left hand pane and you'll see the "Generating report..." status message.

- expand "Reports", then expand "System"
- left click on the latest report (to select it) (EDIT: In Win10, reports are in System Diagnostics folder, from oldest to newest)
- right click on the latest report and select "View", then select "Folder
(the reports are numeric by date, then by number of the report that day. For example, the 6th report I ran on 30 September 2014 is named "SAMSUNG_NP780_20140930-000006")
- scroll down to "report.html" and copy/paste it to your Desktop

- then Zip it up and upload it with your next post.

Just FYI - the reports are located at: C:\PerfLogs\System\Diagnostics\<report name>\report.html

EDIT: My reports are 3.14 mB in size.

Hi Greg! Reports should preferably be done under the conditions that are causing the thrashing. I wonder about the high CPU along with the high drive usage (only on 1 drive). Another thought is if the drive is starting to die - it may take longer to do things on it (and require more CPU) if it's double/triple checking everything that it does on the drive.

It wasn't eMachine's drive that died as I was installing, but another higher spec'd Acer x1300 desktop,. I took that WD out of the eMachine to put into the Acer as a test and it hasn't continued with the issue. But when I imaged it over to an older IDE drive in the same eMachine it started up with the problem until I uninstalled the Mail app as several others did to solve this.

It's interesting that when moved to the Acer the eMachine's HD started Win10 apparently with some soft of built-in adjustment, while Win7 on the same HD would not start on such changed hardware, as expected. This makes me wonder if 10 has hardware adjustability built in. We know it has a much huger driverstore due to inexcusable lack of Win7 SP2, but often it is the HID and SID difference that kills starting on other hardware.

Mike - I followed those reports, too. But neither failed Hitachi HD is detected in BIOS or Diskpart in that or another desktop, so assume it's gone unless there is another way to try to force it to be detected.

These two HD's were bought about the same time in the Acer X1300 Slimlines and had pretty heavy usage for 7 years.

gregrocker said:

Mike - I followed those reports, too. But neither failed Hitachi HD is detected in BIOS or Diskpart in that or another desktop, so assume it's gone unless there is another way to try to force it to be detected.

These two HD's were bought about the same time in the Acer X1300 Slimlines and had pretty heavy usage for 7 years.

Boot up a live linux iso and see if they are detected.

Very confusing results. I boot from Linux Partition Wizard disk and drive is detected with files intact. Passed surface test and Rebuilt MBR. Was then able to boot into it, at least until I unplugged the other drive and installed the problem drive. It wouldn't start again. Why it required the other drive attached to even be seen I don't know. Tried different cables and SATA ports. The other drive is IDE.

Now it's playing weird games showing up in BIOS storage and boot listings as a selectable blank under whatever port I plug it into.

I'm going to try Seatools and Data Lifeguards on CD now. Hitachi DFT will not run, probably because there is no ability to toggle to IDE in BIOS on this PC.

Drive passed both short tests, Quick Wiped to see if it will detect.

Could this possibly be related to the "dirty bit" scenario caused by Fast Boot?