Windows Disk Usage at 100% until you move the mouse

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

So this has happened on multiple windows 10/11 computers for a while now that I have but I will leave task manager open on the computers and turn off screensaver, sleep, etc.

After a little while the disk pins itself at 100%, its not always the C drive either, it happens to disks from SAS RAIDs to NVMes.

people online say "oh its just defrag or trimming" or "just windows doing stuff in the background"

But i know for a fact its not any of these.

I have defrag/trim service disabled (a habit I picked up from my vista days)
I have the entire windows defender/security stuff disabled and have no AV on my computer
I have the entire windows search service disabled.
I dont have any third party background applications on my system.

Another point of note is that this does not happen with windows server.

I have the connected user experiences and telemetry service disabled however i still find that pesky little telemetry process running sometimes.
Maybe its this? however other times its just the system process

I have used windows for a long time, I dont buy that this is anything normal, it has to be some kind of spying service or some shit

But i thought i would ask in case anyone knows

[Skiiwee29]

<-- Moved to Troubleshooting -->

[Haswellx86]

So like what, your NVME SSDs' disk usage shows 100% in Task Manager when you are doing nothing? Does it not show in the processes tab what could be using it up? What are the response times as well? This could be just a reading bug.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

2 minutes ago, Haswellx86 said:

So like what, your NVME SSDs' disk usage shows 100% in Task Manager when you are doing nothing? Does it not show in the processes tab what could be using it up? What are the response times as well? This could be just a reading bug.

yeah it would be pinned at 100% the whole time, then i move the mouse and it dumps down to 0

most of the time its the "System" process reading anywhere from 10-100 MB/s /w access times of like 3-10ms

[johnt]

Sounds like anti virus software behavior. I mean 100% usage is a lot, but some AV software is also crazy.

[BitGhost]

Do you happen to have a backup of some kind running? I wouldn't put it past OneDrive.

[The K-Man89]

I agree with the above comments about background bloat running it up but it could also be a bug with your mouse software and or drivers, try doing a full uninstall and reinstall of any software and drivers for your mouse and see if that fixes it.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

3 hours ago, johnt said:

Sounds like anti virus software behavior. I mean 100% usage is a lot, but some AV software is also crazy.

The thing is I have no Antivirus installed and I have the built in windows one disabled via group policy and registry

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

2 hours ago, BitGhost said:

Do you happen to have a backup of some kind running? I wouldn't put it past OneDrive.

I do manual backups to my server over the network, so i have onedrive uninstalled

[johnt]

I would bring up task manager processes, sort by CPU descending, and see what starts eating away at your machine.

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

2 minutes ago, johnt said:

I would bring up task manager processes, sort by CPU descending, and see what starts eating away at your machine.

i already mentioned it in the op, but its the system process.

[Haswellx86]

8 hours ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

yeah it would be pinned at 100% the whole time, then i move the mouse and it dumps down to 0

most of the time its the "System" process reading anywhere from 10-100 MB/s /w access times of like 3-10ms

The System process is the kernel but it is not apparent exactly what is taking the disk usage. You should open resource monitor and check where the majority of the reads and writes and happening when your disk usage is at 100%.

 

I think it could be just some maintenance task but it shouldn't keep happening for so long.

 

edit - Maybe it's automatic maintenance and you could try disabling it in the control panel. But first identify where the I/O is happening.

[Mark Kaine]

9 hours ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

So this has happened on multiple windows 10/11 computers for a while now that I have but I will leave task manager open on the computers and turn off screensaver, sleep, etc.

After a little while the disk pins itself at 100%, its not always the C drive either, it happens to disks from SAS RAIDs to NVMes.

people online say "oh its just defrag or trimming" or "just windows doing stuff in the background"

But i know for a fact its not any of these.

I have defrag/trim service disabled (a habit I picked up from my vista days)
I have the entire windows defender/security stuff disabled and have no AV on my computer
I have the entire windows search service disabled.
I dont have any third party background applications on my system.

Another point of note is that this does not happen with windows server.

I have the connected user experiences and telemetry service disabled however i still find that pesky little telemetry process running sometimes.
Maybe its this? however other times its just the system process

I have used windows for a long time, I dont buy that this is anything normal, it has to be some kind of spying service or some shit

But i thought i would ask in case anyone knows

It's probably something about your "settings"...

 

Ie. Windows trying to fix itself...

You could try fresh install, don't change *any* default settings, install incontrol app, let it do its thing... Do *not* change any other settings. (Except you should probably turn off "fast start")

 

Because windows doesn't do this by default, and certainly not when updates are turned off and it can't be hardware either since several PCs are affected. 

 

Or it's something wrong with your hard drives (just as likely tbh)

 

 

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

@Haswellx86 @Mark Kaine

I can leave resource monitor open instead of task manager, or even sysenternals process explorer,

Any guesses as to what windows server leaves disabled, since it doesnt happen there.

[Haswellx86]

14 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

@Haswellx86 @Mark Kaine

I can leave resource monitor open instead of task manager, or even sysenternals process explorer,

Any guesses as to what windows server leaves disabled, since it doesnt happen there.

Automatic maintenance?