Fixing 100% disk usage in Windows 10 with Chrome and Skype running

Anonymous
2015-08-16T12:25:27+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-09-18T02:47:31+00:00

    I am also having the same issue on my in-laws PC.  I do not see any errors and have been watching the performance stay at 100%.  It does not have Skype or Chrome at this point.  I was starting to think the HDD is going bad but don't want to jump into that yet. 

    I left it running lenovo storage diag. and will check it tomorrow.  I uninstalled old Lenovo programs and it seems like the 100% usage seems to fluctuate a little.

    Lenovo IdeaCentre K410

    Windows 10 Home 64-bit

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-09-16T16:43:38+00:00

    I finally did a system restore to a point in time (in my machine it was 09-September-2015) and since then I've had no issues.

    While restoring it was confirmed that there was no program or feature installed. Which means that the problem is more likely to do with Windows update. 

    The only thing I still haven't done after restoration is sign into one drive yet (still wary of doing so).  Nevertheless, will have to and will post if there are any problems post that.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-09-16T11:45:47+00:00

    me too,,  I don't have these programs

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-09-12T14:46:52+00:00

    I dont have Skype or Chrome and I'm getting 100% Disk Usage half the time it's AVG resident shield and the other half its firefox -_-

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-09-11T23:50:48+00:00

    I will recommend you use msconfig to run in safe boot mode with networking and also disable all non microsoft services in the services tab then reboot in safe mode and then see if it resolves the issue, if it does then start enabling one service at a time to find out which causes the problem to appear again.

    Hope this helps.

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