Solved: 100% Disk Usage after Windows 10

1903 Upgrade (Updated May 2019)

By Sam Last updated Aug 25, 2019 0

Microsoft regularly drops windows updates with New features, security improvements, and
bug fixes. And with Windows 10 is set to download and install updates automatically. That
means whenever new cumulative update or feature update Widonws update automatically
download and install on your system. But sometimes after Windows update, a number of
users report High disk usage problem. On task manager, it’s showing 100% disk usage
continuously and windows 10 freezes even not respond mouse clicks.

There are several reasons, such as pending system updates, corrupted system files, disk drive
error and more. Whatever the reason here we have 5 effective solutions apply to fix 100 disk
usage windows 10.

Post Contents :- [show]

Fix 100% disk usage on windows 10

Sometimes if your PC infected with malware that is causing your disk usage to spike. We
recommend to perform a full system scan and restart Windows. Now check if there is no
more high disk usage problem.

Here the solution worked for me applicable if You Are Running the Inbox AHCI Driver
(StorAHCI.sys)

 Press Windows + x and select device manager,

 Under “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers”, right-click “Standard SATA AHCI
Controller” and select “Properties”.
 Navigate to the “Driver” tab and click “Driver Details”. If you see “storahci.sys” in
the list, you are running the Inbox AHCI Driver.
  Close the Driver Details window and go to the Details tab.
 From the drop-down menu, select Device Instance Path. Make note of the path,
starting from VEN_.

Open the registry editor by typing “regedit” in the same Run box.
Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\
<AHCI Controller>\DeviceParameters\InterruptManagement\
MessageSignaledInterruptProperties“,

where <AHCI Controller> refers to the device instance path you

Then change the value of the MSISupported key from “1” to “0”.

Reboot the machine and see whether this works for resolving disk utilization 100 Windows
10.

Install the latest Windows updates

Installing the latest updates can often resolve mysterious problems with your Windows 10
system. Check if you are up to date by going into the “Update and security” section of the
Windows Settings app.
Disable Windows Search and superfetch

According to many Windows experts, there is a bug in Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating

system that results in a kind of searching loop. Basically, you’re computer continually
searches for no reason, using more memory than needed. This problem leads to an increased
load on the physical system drive, that result from 100% disk usage.

 Press Windows + R, type services.msc and ok to open service console,

 Scroll down, and look for search service
 Right click and select stop, look disk usage decreased, if yes
 Change the startup of search service disabled.
 Do the same process with BITs and windows superfetch service,
 Check if this helps to fix the Windows 10 100 disk usage problem.

Disable Windows 10 Prefetch

While Superfetch caches data to RAM based on intelligent guessing, Prefetch works when
you launch those applications. Essentially, Prefetch records information on files that are used
by any given application and then pulls those files to RAM to improve app loading times.
However, Prefetch isn’t your standard Windows service, we need Tweak windows registry to
Disable prefetch Service.

 Press Win + R, Type regedit and hit enter key.

 Here on the registry editor first backup registry database then navigate to
following :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\
SESSION MANAGER\MEMORY MANAGEMENT\PREFETCHPARAMETERS
  In the right side panel, you’ll see an entry for EnablePrefetcher.
 Double-click it and change the DWORD value from 3 (default) to 0 to completely
disable the service.
 You may also put in 1 as the DWORD value, which will keep Prefetcher partially
enabled but disabled for boot files.
 click ok and close the windows registry editor.

After Disable All These Services simply Restart windows to take effect the changes, Next
time when you log in check this time Hard disk usage come to normal state. Still, Need help
fallow next instruction.

Reset Virtual Memory

Windows Automatically Use some Hard disk space (page file) as virtual memory to optimize
the system performance. But if you have recently tweaked virtual memory on your system
and this problem started you need to reset/reconfigure virtual memory settings to make sure
everything is fine.

 From Start menu search for performance and select adjust the appearance and
performance
 Here on Performance options move to Advanced Tab,
 Then click on Change under Virtual memory.
 A new popup Window open named virtual memory.
 Here check the option Automatically manage paging file size for all drives.
 click OK, Apply OK to make save changes,
 This will ask restart windows to take effect, Restart windows and check now disk
usage come to normal.
Repair Corrupted system files

Also Corrupted, Missing system files can cause different errors and problems on windows 10.
Windows SFC utility ( system file checker ) is a good tool that helps to scan and restore
missing system files.

 Open the command prompt as administrator,

 Type Command sfc / scannow and hit enter key to execute the command.

 This will scan windows for corrupted and missing system files.
  If found then this will restore them from a cache folder located %WinDir%\System32\
dllcache.
 You only have to wait until 100% complete the scanning process then after restart
windows.
 Now Check High Disk usage problem solved for you.

Run Check Disk

Some Times this High Disk Usage also cause due to HDD Errors or Bad Sectors. Running
Windows CHKDSK Is a good option to fix 100% disk usage problem which checks and fix
hard disk errors. Normally CHKDSK command Check disk Errors only, By adding some
extra parameter you can force CHKDSK to repair them for you. Let’s see how to check and
fix disk Errors.

Search for cmd, Right click on command prompt and select run as administrator,

not type command chkdsk c: /f /r and press enter key.

Note: Replace C: with your windows installed Drive letter, Mostly its C: but if you installed
windows on a different drive then assign the drive letter.

Command Explained :

 Here Command CHKDSK is for Check disk Drive.

 C: is the Drive Letter, Which check for errors.
 /r Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information
 /f Fixes errors on the disk

After type the command when you press enter to execute the command You’ll see a message
within command prompt that will ask you to confirm whether you’d like to run CheckDisk
on next system reboot. Acknowledge with a Y, and restart your computer. This will scan
disk drive for Errors, Bad sectors if found this will fix them itself for you. CheckDisk might
take some time to finish, but it can be very useful not just for 100% Disk Usage error but
some other issues as well.

Google Chrome causing 100% disk usage

If you notice disk usage goes to 100 after open the chrome browser, apply below tweak.

 In Google Chrome, go to “Settings”.

 Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Advanced”.
 In the “Privacy and security” category, make sure the “Use a prediction service to
load pages more quickly” is turned off.
 In addition, ensure that “Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is
closed” is disabled in “System” settings.

Apply If skype causing 100 disk usage

Make sure that your Skype is quitted in the Taskbar.

 Open Windows Explorer and open “C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\”.

 Right click “Skype.exe” and choose “Properties” from the context menu.
 Then open the “Security” tab and select “Edit”.
 Highlight “ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES” and then check the “Write” box.
 Finally, click “Apply”, “OK” and then “OK” again to save changes.
 Now check your disk usage in Task Manager to see if this has resolved high disk
usage Windows 10.
Fix: High CPU Usage by Service Host:
Local System (Network Restricted)

RECOMMENDED: Click here to fix errors and optimize system performance

Quite a number of Windows users have suffered from a problem where up to 95% of their
CPU and/or Disk have been used by a process known as System Host: Local System
(Network Restricted). This problem first surfaced back in the days of Windows 8 and has
stuck around to haunt the brave users of Windows 10. Users affected by this issue have
reported the System Host: Local System (Network Restricted) process hogging up to 95%
of their CPU and up to 72 MB/s of their computer’s total capability to read data from and
write data to its Hard Disk Drive. Those statistics are significant to say the least.

However, System Host: Local System (Network Restricted), in and of itself, is pretty
ambiguous as it is not any one service but a guise under which a number of different
Windows system services run, any of which could be causing unusually high CPU and/or
Disk usage. In addition, to make things worse, this issue can also be caused by memory leak
in the non-paged pool of memory. Thankfully, due to a lot of intelligent dwelling on the
matter, it has been found that the most common offender that gives birth to this issue is a
Windows system service known as Superfetch – a service that Microsoft claims aims to
maintain and improve the performance of computers as time goes by but, in actuality, is
nothing but a problem waiting to happen. If, in any case, Superfetch is not the root of the
issue, it is certainly being caused by a memory leak in the non-paged pool.

The following are the two most effective solutions that you can use to try and fix this
problem.

Repair Corrupt System Files

Download and run Reimage Plus Repair to scan and restore corrupt and missing files from
here, once done proceed with the solutions below. It is important to ensure that all system
files are intact and not corrupt before proceeding with the solutions below.

Solution 1: Disable the Superfetch service

1. Press Windows Logo key + R to open a Run

2. Type services.msc into the Run dialog and press Enter.
3. Scroll down the list of services on your computer and locate the service named Superfetch.
4. Double-click on Superfetch to edit its settings.
5. Click on Stop to stop the service.
6. Set the Startup type for Superfetch to Disabled.
 7. Click on Apply and then on OK.

8. Restart your computer and check to see whether or not the problem has been fixed once it
boots up.

Solution 2: Fix the memory leak in the non-paged pool of memory

If Solution 1 doesn’t work, don’t fret as you can still move onto this solution. To try and
resolve this issue using this solution, you need to:

Press Windows Logo key + R to open a Run

Type regedit into the Run dialog and press Enter.

In the left pane of the Registry Editor, navigate to the following directory:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > ControlSet001

Click on Services in the left pane and then scroll down under services and chose Ndu.
In the right pane, locate and double-click on the registry value titled Start to modify it.

Change its Value data to 4. Doing so will disable it and plug the memory leak in the non-
paged pool.

Click on OK.

Close the Registry Editor.

Restart your computer. When your computer boots up, you should see that System Host:
Local System (Network Restricted) is no longer using a massive amount of your CPU
and/or Disk.

Solution 3: Running the System File Checker

1. Open the Start menu and type ‘cmd’. Right click on the Command Prompt icon and click on
‘Run as Administrator’. Accept the UAC prompt when it comes up.
 2. In the command prompt, type the “sfc /scannow” and press enter.

Wait for the scan to successfully complete and perform a fix as well. If it’s successful, you’ll
see the response ‘Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired
them. Details are included in the CBS.Log %WinDir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log.’

3. Enter the command dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth. After this command
finishes running, monitor your CPU and Memory load and then check if the issue still exists.

Method 4: Killing SVChost

Killing the Service Host process in the Task Manager solves this issue. After this, try
download your pending updates with an unmetered Wi-Fi connection.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Del to launch the Windows Task Manager. You can also right-click on the
taskbar and select Task Manager.
2. Click on More details to expand the manager. This reveals all the running process.
3. Search through the process for “Service Host: Local System”. This process hosts Windows
Update and the Update Orchestrator Service. Select on this task and click End task.

4. When the confirmation dialog shows up, check Abandon unsaved data and shut down and
click the Shut down
5. Monitor the CPU load and check if the issue has been solved.

Method 5: Performing a Clean Boot

In some cases, a third-party application or service might be causing High Cpu usage.
Therfore, in this step, we will be disabling all non-essential services and applications at
startup. For that:

PRO TIP: If the issue is with your computer or a laptop/notebook you should try using
Reimage Plus which can scan the repositories and replace corrupt and missing files.
This works in most cases, where the issue is originated due to a system corruption. You
can download Reimage by Clicking Here

1. Log in to the computer with an Administrator account.

2. Press “Windows” + “R” to open up the “RUN” prompt.

Opening Run Prompt

3. Type in “msconfig” and press “Enter“.

Running MSCONFIG
4. Click on the “Services” option and uncheck the “Hide all Microsoft Services” button.

Clicking on the “Services” tab and Un-checking the “hide all Microsoft Services” option
5. Click on the “Disable All” option and then on “OK“.

Clicking on the “Disable All” option

6. Click on the “Startup” tab and click on the “Open Task Manager” option.

Clicking on the “Open Task Manager” option

7. Click on the “Startup” button in the task manager.
8. Click on any application in the list that has “Enabled” written next to it and select the
“Disable” option.
 Clicking on the “Startup” tab and selecting an application listed there
9. Repeat this process for all applications in the list and restart your computer.
10. Now your computer has been booted in the “Clean Boot” state.
11. Check to see if the issue goes away.
12. If the error isn’t encountered anymore, start enabling the services one by one and identify
the service by enabling which the error comes back.
13. Either, reinstall the service or keep it disabled.
Did these solutions help to fix 100 Disk usage problem on windows 10? Let us know on
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