Memory Leak mystery

Hi there.

I'm hoping some people can help me with my mom's PC. I'm visiting her this month and she told me her desktop is running extremely slow. She doesn't do much on it except browsing the web and using the odd Microsoft Office program. I went into the task manager and found the memory usage is running consistently around 60-80% and the disk usage is 100% most of the time. I disabled the startup programs and tried to cut down on the processes that were running, but most of them were Windows.

She's got McAffee Total Protection running and scans her computer regularly. She also defrags it regularly and it reads as 0% fragmented.

I tried everything in these videos:
How To Fix High Memory/RAM Usage In Windows 10 - YouTube
How to Speed Up Your Windows 10 Performance (best settings) - YouTube


Steps I went through:
-setting Power Options to High Performance
-deleting all temp files
-Ndu in regedit; modified the "Start" entry from 2 to 4
-permanently disabling Superfetch
-running disk cleanup
-increasing mouse response time
-going into
-reducing run time service
-setting performance setting to "adjust for best performance"

None of these things have helped. The PC is running at 80% memory usage and staying pretty stagnant at 100% disk usage. What else could be going on?

If it were in your home and you had a lot of time to troubleshoot you could do that.
First you would check the integrity of the operating system with sfc /scannow and dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth, check the drive with chkdsk /scan then place the computer in clean boot and evaluate the impact on CPU.
Then check for malware with one time downloadable scans such as ESET or Malwarebytes.
If the CPU consumption did not improve you would use Windows performance recorder (WPR) to make tracings during the high CPU consumption.
Then you would spend time learning how to analyze the results or finding someone that was already trained to interpret the recordings and find the misbehaving application(s).
However you are visiting and would have to continue troubleshooting remotely.
(If your mom is expecting a gift, consider finding out the maximal usable RAM and then upgrading the RAM from 2 GB).
So consider the following steps to get it fixed quickly:

1) create a restore point
2) back up all files
3) create a Macrium image and save that image to another drive
4) perform an in place upgrade repair with a bootable windows 10 iso
5) if memory problems persist after the in place upgrade repair perform a clean install

Macrium Software | Your image is everything

https://social.technet.microsoft.com...indows-10.aspx
Perform a Clean Boot in Windows 10 to Troubleshoot Software Conflicts Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

Clean Install Windows 10 Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials

Download Windows 10

Windows performance recorder - Microsoft Community

Thanks much for the suggestions. I'm staying with her through all of August, so I'm hoping that's enough time to get things squared away.

I'm going through the steps you laid out. I also ordered another stick of RAM to see if that will improve things at all. Will let you know when I get through with everything how it turned out.

Since you are planning to troubleshoot: These are some of the steps to perform

1) computers can accommodate more RAM but you must find out the maximal usable RAM.
You may be able to open the crucial website and download its scanner and see what it finds or suggests:
Welcome to the Crucial US Online Store | Free Delivery

Open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste these commands:
2) sfc /scannow
3) dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth
4) dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth
5) dism /online /cleanup-image /restlrehealth

If these display integrity violations or are unable to complete the perform an in place upgrade repair with a bootable windows 10 iso.
Download Windows 10
This should allow you to save files and applications and repair any operating system or registry problems.

6) chkdsk /scan
This is a scan that checks the file system while you are able to use the computer.
For deeper scanning run chkdsk /x /f /r (this may take many hours so plan to run overnight)

7) msconfig (in the pop up system configuration > move the dot from normal startup to selective startup > uncheck load startup items > click service tab > in left lower corner check hide all Microsoft services > in the lower right side click disable all > click apply or ok > do not reboot)

8) taskmgr (in the pop up task manager > click on the start up tab > click on status so that the column sorts with enable rising to the top > right click on each row with enable and change to disable)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windowshttps://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/29876.how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-10.aspx

9) shutdown /r (you will reboot the computer so that it is in clean boot)Evaluate the performance on your computer in clean boot during typical use.
Are the boots faster or slower?
Are the shutdowns faster or slower?
How has the audio and video performance changed? Is it better, worse, or the same?
Continue using clean boot indefinitely to monitor performance.

If there is any doubt about anything the best bang for the buck/time is the in place upgrade repair with a windows 10 iso.

Steps for an in place upgrade repair:
1) find a flash drive you can format
2) create a bootable windows 10 iso
3) power on the computer and open file explorer
4) in file explorer > this PC > local c: drive
5) insert windows 10 iso into any USB port
6) identify the windows 10 iso within file explorer
7) click on the windows 10 iso and find setup or setup.exe > launch it
8) do not click on install unless you want to perform a clean install (deletes partitions, formats drive, makes unallocated drive)
9) look in the lower left for repair your computer
10 select language, time, currency, keyboard
11) follow the steps in this link:
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials