Disk Performance at 100%

Hello all,
I am new to this forum so I am not sure exactly where this post should belong. I know this topic has been discussed a lot and solutions have worked for others but I cannot seem to find anything to remedy my situation. I have a 4790k with 8gb ram and gtx 970. It has been a great machine up until this point issue free. I have for a few weeks been wanting to take the computer apart and rethink some of the cabling. I pulled everything in the case out and reworked everything. Everything was plugged in exactly as it was but when the computer is turned now the disk usage stays at 100% for around 20 minutes. Then randomly it goes down to normal for 5 or 10 minutes then will go back up to 100. In safe mode there is little read/write usage so I don't think it is a hardware issue. I look at the resource monitor when the disk is at 100% and there are different tasks listed at the top. But I always see PID4 system at or near the top spot. I have tried to disable services like superfetch and intellengent background transfer service. No luck. Also tried disabling windows defender. No luck. And now as I look into this more I notice Microsoft edge is completely gone from the desktop and program list and the only way to get it is to type edge in the search bar and that the start menu is only listing programs and nothing else. Sorry for the length of this post. I am just out of ideas.
Thanks!

Here is a picture of the resource monitor process list.

Edited by Airboss16, 06 February 2017 - 11:07 PM.

Let's do a Clean Boot to see if this is a third party process causing this.

How to perform a Clean Boot.

Warning:  Disabling items in Services or Startup may leave your anitivius disabled until the process is ended.  For this reason I would suggest that you perform this process off line.

 Press the Windows key and the R key to open Run, then type msconfig in the search box.  This will open System Configuration.

If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, you should enter the password or provide confirmation.

(1)  Click/tap on the General tab.   

(2)  Click/tap on the Selective startup option.

(3)  Remove the check mark in the Load startup items  check box.



4.  Click on the Services tab.

5.  Place a check mark in the Hide all Microsoft services check box, this will remove the Microsoft Services from the list but will still be running.

6.  Click Disable all, this will remove all of the check marks in the Services list.



7.  Click on Hide all Microsoft services.  Click on Apply then OK  



Click on Restart in the window that opens.

When the computer is restarted it will boot normally.  

Let me know if the problem persists after restarting the computer.

If the problem does not continue after the restart please do the following.

8.  Devide the number of these services by two and you place checks in the first half of these, then restart
the computer.
 
9.  If the problem doesn't return in those services remove the checks and place checks in the remaining
services.

10.  When you find which half the service is in go on to the next step.  

11.  In the half that the problem came back in you should remove the checks from the first half or the
services.

12.  Restart the computer.  If it isn't in the first half of these services, do the same with the last half of the
services.

13.  Once you have narrowed it down to the last three or four services remove the checks one at a time till
you find the service at fault.

Once you have found the service post it in your topic.  Do not take any action until I suggest the next step.



 

Edited by dc3, 07 February 2017 - 03:08 PM.

Thank you. This is in work now. I will update as soon as I have something for you.

Sorry I haven't been able to replay more quickly. Work took me out of town. With the clean boot, all non-Microsoft services disabled, the issue remains that unchanged. Although it seemed it took less time for the hardrive to settle. Still, the system process is always on top, or never out of the top 3 processes in total disk usage. Svhost.exe is another. Currently looking at the resource monitor, the machine has been powered on for around 20 minutes. The initial 100% issue has subsided. Then the disk activity spikes to 100% with svhost at the top in processes with disk activity. In the box below called disk activity there are 20 items listed as svhost. This behavior is not exclusive to svhost. I have seen it with taskhostw and msmpeng. One thing I have noticed that seems to corrilate to the issue is when the disk runs up to 100% there seems to be around 20-25 tasks in the process with disk activity. Now that the disk has settled to 0 I have 2 processes listed in this box. Thank you very much for your suggestions.

Normally this is caused by insufficient RAM, however at 8GB that is probably not your issue.  The next most frequent culprit is security software, i.e. Anti-Virus.  If you disable your AV does the issue go away? 

I noticed once that when I terminated the windows defender stuff it started behaving normally for a minute or two then started again. I haven't been able to reproduce the fix so I think it was coincidental. I also suspected ram may be an issue. I upgraded to 16gb ddr3 this morning and no change. The problem doesn't take as long to correct itself I suppose but the behavior is unchanged. As for antivirus protection I don't run any. I know I am asking for an issue, but the computer is not always connected and the only time the internet is used is to visit the same trusted sites. No email or anything. The primary purpose for this machine is to act as a flight simulator to stay current for work so when the disk goes to 100% my sims are mostly unusable. I will add the longer the computer is on and at idle the less frenquent the hard disk spikes are.
Thanks again!

Windows Defender in Windows 10 is a full blown antivirus, so yes you are running an antivirus.

 

Please don't use abbreviations like sims, I have no idea what you are referring to.

Sorry, simulator.