Windows 11 100% disk usage

MrFunex · 11 Mar 2023 at 14:52

Hi,

New PC, fresh copy of windows 11. I’ve got very little installed on it so far (a couple of steam games and NVidia GeForce experience). All drivers up to date, as far as I can tell.

Once the desktop is visible, the disk usage goes to 100% and the system crawls. This lasts for about 5 minutes, then stops. Once whatever is being done has finished, the issue is over, until restarting.

I’ve had a look in task manager, but nothing really shows up. Under the performance tab, it shows relatively low (500-700kb/sec) transfer rates from the drive, but access time is 400-600ms+. I can only imagine lots of tiny requests are being made, saturating the interface.

Has this been asked before? Any common issues?

Zefan · 11 Mar 2023 at 15:22

Within task manager open resource monitor, then select the disk tab. This should show you exactly what is doing what as opposed to task manager which just shows something's happening.

MrFunex · 11 Mar 2023 at 15:35

Thanks - I’d forgotten about resource monitor! I’ll do some more investigating.

andy_mk3 · 11 Mar 2023 at 16:03

Assuming you have an SSD and not a HDD?

MrFunex · 11 Mar 2023 at 16:20

andy_mk3 said:
Assuming you have an SSD and not a HDD?

Yes - SSD, albeit a SATA one, not nvme.

andy_mk3 · 11 Mar 2023 at 16:37

MrFunex said:
Yes - SSD, albeit a SATA one, not nvme.

Yeah SATA SSD will be fine then. Modern windows is awful on a HDD, there’s so much background activity that it just hammers it.

Did you find anything in resource monitor?

MrFunex · 11 Mar 2023 at 16:40

andy_mk3 said:
Yeah SATA SSD will be fine then. Modern windows is awful on a HDD, there’s so much background activity that it just hammers it.

Did you find anything in resource monitor?

Thanks - I’ll have to have a look tomorrow, but I’ll be back to update this thread.

I don’t miss the old days of a HDD churning away, that’s for sure…

demonix · 11 Mar 2023 at 17:48

MrFunex said:
NVidia GeForce experience

That is highly likely to be the reason for all that disc access (voice of experience as 9 times out of 10 times I've seen drive access going on, task manager shows nvidia processes as the cause).

You can either nuke GFE and only have the driver installed or don't have any games installed on the same drive that the OS is installed on.

MrFunex · 13 Mar 2023 at 15:32

Thanks for your help - it does appear to be GFE that was at fault.

Perhaps it was scanning for new games to apply performance profiles to, on every startup, at top priority?

Anyway - all is well! Cheers!

Rroff · 14 Mar 2023 at 05:18

Post fresh install you'll often get things like .net compiling/optimisation and other maintenance tasks running in the background for some time along with all the junk Windows does around a new installation/update. Some stuff like bundled software/motherboard control software, etc. can also be quite busy on a new install. Sadly these days you often have to either leave a new install for an hour or so or go to town disabling the various compatibility, telemetry, etc. processes. Very little of this software is programmed for the benefit of the end user these days.

mrk · 14 Mar 2023 at 23:34

You want to check your GFE game recordings folder now, because it sounds like you accidentally clicked the kayboard shortcut to start recording when GFE is open and it was recording your desktop (which uses DWM which is 3D).

Zefan said:
Within task manager open resource monitor, then select the disk tab. This should show you exactly what is doing what as opposed to task manager which just shows something's happening.

The disk monitor tab doesn't show you much other than /activity/ It's the main task manager tab that is important here, you can sort by disk usage, which is exactly what is needed here.

Rroff · 14 Mar 2023 at 23:38

mrk said:
The disk monitor tab doesn't show you much other than /activity/ It's the main task manager tab that is important here, you can sort by disk usage, which is exactly what is needed here.

You can sort by disk activity in resource monitor as well, then select the process to see what actual files are involved which can help to narrow down where the activity is coming from.

Emlyn_Dewar · 15 Mar 2023 at 04:39

Telemetry frequently causes this but I've only seen that on HDDs.
Disable it anyway, only good things can come from that.

Zefan · 15 Mar 2023 at 07:31

mrk said:
The disk monitor tab doesn't show you much other than /activity/ It's the main task manager tab that is important here, you can sort by disk usage, which is exactly what is needed here.

Not sure where you think I'm talking about but you can sort by process, read speed, write speed, total, etc etc in res mon. It's way better than task manager.

mrk · 15 Mar 2023 at 10:40

Oh I thought you were referring to the Disk tab in task manager whch shows basic resources, not Resource Monitor itself which is outside of task manager and its own tool (perfmon.exe). I think task manager used to have a link to perfmon, but as of now, can't see any option to launch it, just start > perfmon, then pin it for quick access. I have it in the start menu for easy access when needed

Rroff · 16 Mar 2023 at 00:14

Typical MS remove something which is actually useful... didn't realise they'd removed the link in 11.