Disk Usage Jumping to 100% When Idle, Sometimes At Random

Basically exactly what the title says. I've been dealing with this for about 8 or 9 months now and it seems to come and go, and I've tried a lot of different solutions I've read around the internet. I've turned off all notifications and tips and tricks. I've completely disabled Windows Search. I've defragmented my hard drive. I've turned off Superfetch (and turned it back on when it's done nothing to help). I've run ScanDisk through the command prompt to search for and fix errors.

I'm at my wit's end here because outside of my hard drive starting to be on the way out, I can't really figure out on a software/OS level what could be causing this or how to stop it, but I never had the problem before upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and it seems to be a common complaint with 10, so I'm hoping there's just something here I'm missing.

Now, barring the rare case where my disk usage will jump to 100% out of nowhere while I'm using my computer, this mostly only happens when I leave it idle for 20 or more minutes, say to do the dishes or something. If I don't have something constantly running in the background, like a game, or suitably semi-weighty program, my disk usage will, after a certain point, skyrocket.

At that point, there's nothing I can do but A.) Force a shut down of my computer, since it will move so slow it can't even shut down or restart properly, or B.) Bizarrely, open up a disk monitoring program. This may or may not work because sometimes it's so bogged down it won't open, but, I have a program called CrystalDiskInfo, and the second it opens up, everything goes back to normal. It's like Schrodinger's Glitch, or something.

But, if anybody here has had a similar problem or can shine some light on what could be causing this, it would be *very* greatly appreciated. It's starting to get out of hand.

Caledon Ken said:

Welcome to the Tensforum @Toast

Have you seen this article? It too mentions Superfetch as one item.

FIX: 100% Disk Usage by “System and Compressed Memory” in Windows 10 - Appuals.com

I believe this was originally posted by @TairikuOkami ( I think, hopefully I got this right.)


Ken

Thank you!

I tried following the instructions there, but with the first one, Malwarebytes blocked the link reporting it as a potentially dangerous site, and with the second one, I cannot get "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows" to open at all? I click it, but absolutely nothing happens. Could it be because of my W10 version?

SFC found no issues, and the Virtual Memory paging file is already set to automatic, so I'm assuming that isn't the cause.

From what I understand of Superfetch, it preloads programs and apps so they're quicker to load, right? Could it be that it's preloading something incorrectly/buggy/incompatible in the background, and that's why my disk usage skyrockets when idle?

Setting and resetting the page file did nothing.

The event log seems mostly benign, but a few errors jumped out at me:

"File System Filter 'wcifs' (Version 10.0, ‎2016‎-‎09‎-‎15T12:42:03.000000000Z) failed to attach to volume '\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy4'. The filter returned a non-standard final status of 0xC000000D. This filter and/or its supporting applications should handle this condition. If this condition persists, contact the vendor."

"The DSM service was delayed by 58 seconds for a driver query/download/install on device 'STORAGE\VOLUMESNAPSHOT\HARDDISKVOLUMESNAPSHOT4'"

"SettingSyncHost (4804) {206A4A50-BBED-46C6-B2CB-09AEF496B633}: A request to write to the file "C:\Users\James\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\SettingSync\remotemetastore\v1\meta.edb" at offset 1114112 (0x0000000000110000) for 16384 (0x00004000) bytes has not completed for 36 second(s). This problem is likely due to faulty hardware. Please contact your hardware vendor for further assistance diagnosing the problem."

Beyond that there's a lot of stuff in the event logs that I don't really understand, so I'm not sure what I should be looking for exactly. But my usage just jumped and these three events were recorded at roughly that time.

Hm, yeah, it seems to be something affecting a ton of Windows 10 users lately related to restore points, so whatever it is, it's probably not related to my Disk Usage issue. I'm at a total loss as to what could be causing that at this point, but it's making me seriously regret upgrading from 7.