W8: ntoskrnl.exe - 100% Disk Usage

DaleTheWhale · 5 Jan 2014 at 14:05

This is causing me a lot of pain on my Girlfriends PC.

I upgraded mine and switched all my old parts out and gave them to my GF to use for her system, however using an old WD Black 250GB for the time being.
Whilst playing, the game would lock up and slowly managing to ALT-TAB out the game and open the resource manager, ntoskrnl.exe under a System Process is always making full use of the disk drive.

I also use Windows 8.1 on my PC, with a SSD & HDD, and haven't had any locks up like this, so I bought 2 500GB's for my GF to use, 1 for OS & Files, 1 just for game installs, thinking this would fix the issue?
However again it locked up & now I'm confused.

What is causing ntoskrnl.exe to use 100% of the disk for 30 minutes at a time, playing the Sims 3 seemed OK, and I'm going to try get the PC to lock up again playing BF4 on her PC again.

Anybody got any ideas?

Currently testing:

- Power set to High Performance
- Virtual Memory set to 8GB to match RAM

Elevon · 5 Jan 2014 at 14:25

Few things to try ie run memory test on the ram,change HD cables,also check in event viewer and reliability history for any error info.

Using any third party anti-virus?..Check its compatible with Win8 etc...

DaleTheWhale · 5 Jan 2014 at 14:59

Using MSE for Anti-virus and Windows Defender for Firewall.
HDD cables are brand new, but have used others, event viewer isn't showing anything out of the ordinary, RAM is also working perfect with no errors.

The only issue is after a little while, whether it's coincidence it happens when playing Battlefield 4 or not, that process kicks in doing something & then the drive ramps up to 100% slowing everything down.

ntoskrnl.exe - This is always the culprit when I investigate, so something it is doing is causing the slow down. It has been reporting numerous times since the release of Windows 8, however cannot find a reason for it.

Glaucus · 5 Jan 2014 at 15:06

A quick Google suggest changing power setting from balanced to high performance.

gpuerrilla · 5 Jan 2014 at 15:08

Try setting your virtual memory to the same amount as your RAM.

DaleTheWhale · 5 Jan 2014 at 15:13

Glaucus said:
A quick Google suggest changing power setting from balanced to high performance.

I did this before, however have just checked again and it's back at balanced, I think my clone to the new drive may have reset this or, it never set properly in the first place.

Now, this could sort the issue, as I previously thought it was set. - I did just happen to me, my RAM flew up to 95% used and disk was at 100%.

Any reason why when it stopped using it, the RAM has now stayed at 83% used, however nothing is really using it? - See pictures:

Th0nt said:
Try setting your virtual memory to the same amount as your RAM.

Have also done this now.

DaleTheWhale · 5 Jan 2014 at 17:14

Still the same, RAM back at high 90% usage and doesn't then drop back down and the disk is still being locked by the program running.

^ Image of when the program stops running & Battlefield inevitably crashes/kicks me. I don't understand why the RAM usage remains high at idle?

gpuerrilla · 5 Jan 2014 at 17:27

Do you use AVG?

Have you tried disabling 'write caching'?

Only other thing I would look into is your controller driver i.e. intel RST or whatever the motherboard has. Apparently in W8 it doesn't like older chipsets so you may have to force through an older version that works.

FrenchTart · 5 Jan 2014 at 17:32

Rather than cloning an OS with dodgy behaviour to the new drive just do a wipe and fresh install.

You'll spend an hour or so doing this and it will probably solve the issue.

Matteysan · 5 Jan 2014 at 17:33

I had this problem on my laptop & it turned out to be Intel Rapid Storage Technology. Updated the software to a newer version & not had an issue since.

DaleTheWhale · 5 Jan 2014 at 21:38

FrenchTart said:
Rather than cloning an OS with dodgy behaviour to the new drive just do a wipe and fresh install.

You'll spend an hour or so doing this and it will probably solve the issue.

Went with this in the end and installed Windows 7, the GF prefers it anyway. Hopefully it doesn't play up again, would love to know why the file was playing up.

Matteysan said:
I had this problem on my laptop & it turned out to be Intel Rapid Storage Technology. Updated the software to a newer version & not had an issue since.

I have seen a guy fix the issue by disabling his Optical Drive in device manager, which make's no sense. Such a weird issue.

andshrew · 5 Jan 2014 at 22:14

It's a bit late now but this was almost certainly being caused by a memory leak resulting from a combination of BF4, AMD drivers and Windows 8.

You had 5.4GB of data in the non-paged pool in your task manager screenshot (as a result of the leak) and as the system had effectively run out of RAM it was having to make heavy use of the page file which is why the hard drive was being used excessively.

It may just have been a case of updating the AMD drivers to have solved it. But these problems are widely reported online if you search BF4 memory leak.

DaleTheWhale · 5 Jan 2014 at 23:51

andshrew said:
It's a bit late now but this was almost certainly being caused by a memory leak resulting from a combination of BF4, AMD drivers and Windows 8.

You had 5.4GB of data in the non-paged pool in your task manager screenshot (as a result of the leak) and as the system had effectively run out of RAM it was having to make heavy use of the page file which is why the hard drive was being used excessively.

It may just have been a case of updating the AMD drivers to have solved it. But these problems are widely reported online if you search BF4 memory leak.

I still have a copy of the image I created, so may have a go with what you have mentioned tomorrow.