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?

[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.

[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

[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...

[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...

[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)