Disk Usage at 100% (Win 10)

Tupac · December 28, 2016

Specs:

HD 7970

1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM

16GB DDR3 RAM

FX-6350

Gigabyte 970a-ds3p

Windows 10 64-bit

A friend of mine dropped off his pc and claimed it took forever to boot. I took a look at it and noticed that the boot time was quite long (~7 minutes) and applications were taking equally long to open (~3 minutes before being able to use any app). Using the search bar on the windows taskbar has also become damn near impossible due to the ridiculous time it takes to input any characters.

Here's what I've attempted:

- Ran Zemana and Malwarebytes, no anomalies were found.

- Went in cmd and ran the ol' net.exe stop "Windows search", net.exe stop superfetch, chkdsk.exe /f /r combo

So far I've been able to reduce his boot time to 40-50 seconds, but opening and running applications is still a 3-5 minute affair. The search bar is still unusable due to the massive delay between entering a character and having it register. Anyone have any ideas?

Crowes · December 28, 2016

I'd say just reinstall Windows. If you're not willing to do that, look for clues in the Task Manager.. or does that take five minutes too?

PCGeek · December 28, 2016

In the Task Manager for Win10 go to the Startup tab and disable any unnecessary startup programs. The HDD is probably the biggest bottleneck. Upgrading to a SSD would help a great deal. Also check sector alignment.

Crowes · December 28, 2016

1 minute ago, PCGeek said:

The HDD is probably the biggest bottleneck.

You know, I just thought when you said this: @Tupac, when you say "a five minute affair", is this when you first get onto the desktop during boot? Do programs always take this long, even after everything has finished starting up?

When I say, "finished starting up", I'm not pointing out Windows' start-up quota, I'm saying actually finished. As in, leave your computer for half an hour, then try and open a program. Does that take five minutes?

This is pretty key. If it doesn't, it's the HDD. If it does, it's Windows.

Tupac · December 28, 2016

Just now, PCGeek said:

In the Task Manager for Win10 go to the Startup tab and disable any unnecessary startup programs. The HDD is probably the biggest bottleneck. Upgrading to a SSD would help a great deal. Also check sector alignment.

The biggest resource hog right now is cmd at 0.1mb/s. This is maxing out the disk to 100% capacity. Start up is time is more or less normal after disabling discord and cursevoice from start up, but the applications themselves take several minutes to boot.

Tupac · December 28, 2016

1 minute ago, Crowes said:

You know, I just thought when you said this: @Tupac, when you say "a five minute affair", is this when you first get onto the desktop during boot? Do programs always take this long, even after everything has finished starting up?

When I say, "finished starting up", I'm not pointing out Windows' start-up quota, I'm saying actually finished. As in, leave your computer for half an hour, then try and open a program. Does that take five minutes?

This is pretty key. If it doesn't, it's the HDD. If it does, it's Windows.

It does, I'll get an ISO and see if a fresh install helps.