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How to fix 100% disk usage in Windows 10
This is caused by a common combination of Skype as well Google Chrome. Similar issue with other programs could also cause 100% disk usage. To fix this do the following:
Google Chrome:
In Google Chrome, go to Settings > Show Advanced Settings ... > Privacy > Prefetch resources to load pages more quickly
and untick it. See Figure-1 below:
Figure-1
Skype:
Make sure you have exited Skype and it is not running in the taskbar (if it is running in the taskbar then quit it).
Open Windows Explorer and open the following folder:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone"
Now right click "Skype.exe" file and then click "Properties" and open the "Security" tab.
Click the "Edit" button and then highlight "ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES" and place a tick in the "Write" box.
Click "Apply" and then "OK" and then "OK" again. See Figures-2 to Figure-6 below:
This is it, now run Skype and check the Disk Usage in Task Manager and it will no longer show you 100% disk usage anymore:-
I hope this helps people. I spent a long time in finding a solution to this problem.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I think your laptop is fine - I think that lots of disk usage after startup is normal. If still at 100% after 10 minutes, but then decreasing, might simply mean that it's doing lots of indexing or virus checks for you.
The problem is when it continues at 100%, even though none of the programs show any activity (i.e. 0 Mb/s). That's the problem that appears to be solved by changing the driver.
With my laptop it is around 3-4 minutes before it comes down to almost nothing.
Most of the posters here are talking about it never coming down to a reasonable level.
My question would be if 10 minutes at 100% is normative for Windows 10 at start-up, and if a delay of a few minutes is bad for our laptops?
When Microsoft Store first updated my laptop to Windows 10, (at the beginning of the update period), they noticed the 100%. Some of the employees thought it needed a new hard drive. Microsoft released it to me, and it has always started out at 100% and gone down to even 0% after a few minutes.
What should we consider a normal start-up in minutes for the Disk to drop down to a low level?
* Does anybody have their laptop starting from 0-20% Disk Usage right from start-up?
Actually I saw this issue on an older HP desktop that had SATA set to RAID in BIOS (I don't know why because there was only one drive in it). The Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers that were installed were also old. Windows 10 had not upgraded them. When I looked at the latest drivers, they were not compatible with the chipset that was in the machine so I could not upgrade them. I ended up just disabling RST and then everything ran fine. This could definitely be the cause of some of these 100% disk issues if those computers are configured as was the one I saw. Check to see if the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver is causing the high disk usage.
JohnD
finally somebody agreed with me! the cause of sluggishness is a driver problem!
Hi,
I've just solved this problem on my Dell Optiplex 990, running Windows 10.
It was running in RAID mode (as set in the BIOS) using iaStorAV.sys, and after an update from a hard drive to an SSD it was using often crashing with 100% of disk usage, but with no real activity (0 MB/s).
Having tried so many of the proposed solutions on the 'net (Virtual memory, disabling an interrupt, Windows Defender disable, Skype/Chrome mis-match), I finally went for changing the BIOS mode from RAID to AHCI. This forced a change of the driver to iaStor.sys instead of iaStorAV.sys and all the problems have gone.
So it does seem as though iaStorAV.sys has a problem, at least in Windows 10 with an SSD.
Note that in order to change from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS requires doing it whilst 'in' Safe Mode - as detailed here:
I hope this helps to solve someone else's problem - if only to point in the right direction (bad driver!).
Richard
