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#1
Source of 100% disk usage?
Hello,
I would greatly appreciate any help you might offer solving a recent problem with my computer. Over the past few days my disk usage has been run up to 100% and I cannot seem to fix it. It is causing very significant performance issues in an otherwise brand-new computer purchased about three weeks ago.
Specs:
Dell Inspiron 17
Intel Core i7-7500U @2.70 GHz
16.0 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 940MX
WebRoot SecureAnywhere antivirus
Two days ago I was browsing the internet and installing/uninstalling several media management programs (aTube catcher, MediaMonkey). My system began to run very slowly, so I closed all programs one by one and restarted the computer. I was stuck at the "Getting Windows ready - do not turn off your computer." screen for about an hour before the computer actually started again. I checked the task manager to see if the performance had been fixed, and found disk usage to be sitting at 99%, with other parameters normal. I suspect culprit has to be somewhere in the "Service Host: Local System" or "System" processes, as they are the first to jump to the top of the list in terms of disk use. (See attachments)
Since then, I have done the following:
- Disabled the "Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)" and "Superfetch" services, turned off most Windows sharing options. I searched for initial solutions to this problem and the method of disabling these kept coming up. I also changed both of these options' values in the registry editor to keep them from activating themselves, but they appear to still be running. (See attachments) This initially brought me back down to regular disk usage percentages, but as of this morning I have returned to 99%.
- Ran full system scans with avast! antivirus, including a boot-time scan. Created an avast! restore on a flash drive.
- Checked that Windows and all drivers are up to date.
- Disabled non-critical startup programs that were slowing down the computer. (See attachments)
- Uninstalled "crapware" (Bonjour, a Steam game, etc.)
- Created a restore point for the system when it appeared to have returned to regular percentages. I would go back to this point, but nothing has changed with my system since creating it and I still ended up at 99%. If I had to do a total system restore to factory condition I would not be set back too far, but I would like to avoid it if possible.
- Uninstalled avast! Free antivirus assuming it was conflicting with WebRoot and draining resources. No result. I've used avast! for years without much issue but the free WebRoot subscription that came with this computer was touted as being very lightweight. Does not appear to have helped.
I have been very safe in terms of browsing since getting this computer and would like to restore the speed to what it was. If the problem is in the processes (BITS and/or Superfetch), perhaps I can resolve the issue by getting the values in the registry editor to stay at 0, disabling them.
Please let me know any thoughts or methods you might have in resolving this, and thank you very much for your time!