Windows 8.1 PC. 100% HDD usage causes hanging

[Megaflow]

Hi Folks

I bought a new PC at the start of the year from PC Specialist and it has a bit of a bug which is really annoying. The disk usage goes to 100% and the machine hangs for a few seconds.

This is the machine spec:
Processor: Intel Core i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3450S (2.8GHz) 6MB Cache
Memory: 8GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card: Intel HD Graphics 4000 Video Memory Technology up to 1.7GB
Hard Disk: 240GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

If memory serves it if on a Gigabit mother board.

This is what I have tried to sort the issue:
Changed power management setting of ssd
Loaded new ssd driver
Increased page file size
Disabled background intelligent transfer service
Disabled windows search service
Stopped windows defender scanning itself
Disabled windows defender and replaced with Avast
Fixed the page file to a min and max of 16GB

But nothing has yet been sucessful. Googling seems to suggest this is a very common problem with 8.1 and it is nothing to do with the PC itself.

If I open Task Manager, go to details and look at I/O reads and writes the heaviest users are svchost.exe, avastsvc.exe and chrome.

Any suggestions chaps?

[grumbledoak]

Try not using Avast or Chrome and see if it still happens?

[Megaflow]

It will occasionally hang just after booting before anything has been used, that rules out Chrome, and it did it with defender as well, which kind of rules Avast out as well.

I wondered if it could be due to windows being in an SSD, but there are too many people suffering the same issue for it to be that.

[grumbledoak]

Mine is on an SSD, I doubt it is that.

Good luck.

[nyt]

could it be that your disk is somehow corrupt and the anti-virus is going into some sort of loop?

Try disabling anti-virus and rebooting (not connected to the internet).

Also try chkdsk to see if you have disk issues.

[WinstonWolf]

Re-enable BITS.

[theboss]

Install the latest motherboard BIOS and also the Intel SSD toolbox which allows you to check for any firmware updates for the disk. As others have mentioned then look at chipset drivers and so on.

I'd also be tempted to backup and then flatten the disk, reinstall Windows and a minimal, up-to-date set of drivers and see if you still get the problem.

Also look at peripherals - I bought an Asus 802.11ac PCI-E card last year which bizarelly caused a crash on system startup when used with certain motherboard chipsets - no driver updates or fix possible - just a case of returning the product.

It is certainly not a 'common' Windows 8.1 or SSD related issue - its a very stable OS.

[grumbledoak]

I just noticed you've mucked about with the page file size. It isn't like unix swap; you really should just leave that to windows.

[Megaflow]

Ok, thanks guys. I am going to try the following and will report back:

Disable avast and reboot
Run check disk
Re enable BITS
Give page file control back to windows

[theboss]

Megaflow said:

Ok, thanks guys. I am going to try the following and will report back:

Disable avast and reboot
Run check disk
Re enable BITS
Give page file control back to windows

As mentioned - https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?...

[Megaflow]

theboss said:

Megaflow said:

Ok, thanks guys. I am going to try the following and will report back:

Disable avast and reboot
Run check disk
Re enable BITS
Give page file control back to windows
Download Intel toolbox

As mentioned - https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?...

Ah, yes, forgot that one...

[YarisSi]

My Win 8.1 machine has a HDD and is fairly basic desktop machine and I was getting lots of crashes, 100% disk use and poor performance. One thing I changed was to move the energy setting to performance or whatever the equivalent term is rather than balanced.

[TurricanII]

To diagnose what is using the disk:
1. Press CTRL+ALT+ESC to load Task Manager
2. Click the Performance tab
3. Click Open Resource Monitor (bottom)
4. Expand the Disk heading and click it so you index by greatest disk use at the top. Watch for a while.
5. See what process and more importantly what file name is hammering the disk when it peaks.

Post the file name here.

[ZesPak]

Are you by any chance running Google Drive? It's been known to max out and hog the HDD on all sorts of platforms, I've had it on my laptop as well :/.

[Megaflow]

ZesPak said:

Are you by any chance running Google Drive? It's been known to max out and hog the HDD on all sorts of platforms, I've had it on my laptop as well :/.

That is a very interesting suggestion... I don't use Google Drive, but when I checked CCleaner>Start Up>Chrome yesterday I am sure there was a Google Drive entry, which because I don't use it, I deleted it. And so far this morning it has been much more stable...

[Megaflow]

Megaflow said:

theboss said:

Megaflow said:

Ok, thanks guys. I am going to try the following and will report back:

Disable avast and reboot
Run check disk
Re enable BITS
Give page file control back to windows
Download Intel toolbox

As mentioned - https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?...

Ah, yes, forgot that one...

Ok, so I have tried all that. Check Disk brings up a DOS box for about 0.5 seconds before it is gone again, I guess this is because it is checking an SSD and because it disappears again there is no issue.

Intel Toolbox says the drive is 100% happy with 100% life remaining.

TurricanII said:

To diagnose what is using the disk:
1. Press CTRL+ALT+ESC to load Task Manager
2. Click the Performance tab
3. Click Open Resource Monitor (bottom)
4. Expand the Disk heading and click it so you index by greatest disk use at the top. Watch for a while.
5. See what process and more importantly what file name is hammering the disk when it peaks.

Post the file name here.

So far lots of system stuff and chrome, but this morning it has not hung up.

The Google Drive thing is very interesting, I disable that on Chrome start up and it has been a *lot* better, could it really be that simple...

[grumbledoak]

I gave up on Google Drive a while ago because of it's start-up behaviour (slow, cancerous log files). It sounds like it is still a work in progress!

[Megaflow]

Maybe I spoke to soon... The last thing I did before typing the above was run Intel Toolbox, before that it had been fine this morning, now it has hung up a few times.

Resource monitor shows the problem to be C:\$LogFile (NTFS Volume Log) and C:\$BitMap (NTFS Free Space Map)