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
    2016-04-16T12:05:42+00:00

    I did the Google Chrome suggestion and still at 100% and I do not even have Skype.  THis is the third forum have been in and the third set of different "causes" and 'fixes" for this problem and yet here I a still trying to resolve this issue.  Since this **** didn't happen in other versions of Windows, my question is WHAT IS MICROSOFT DOING TO FIX THE ISSUE?????? Why should we the consumer have to spend countless hours trying all of these possible fixes??  Why don't they just correct the background issues and send a free update to its users.  Its time to step up to the plate Microsoft and FIX the problem, clearly it stems from a programming issue on your side and I shouldn't have to keep playing Geek Squad trying to solve the mystery.  Over it!!!

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-04-16T12:24:30+00:00

    I agree with a previous poster.  There are two "100%" issues:

    1. It's annoying - the hard drive is doing a lot after boot-up, for many reasons.  Maybe Microsoft can improve on this in the future, but it doesn't stop your PC working.  Lots of suggestions here may change this, but in the end it's not really a bug - just an annoying feature of many programs trying to do stuff (indexing / virus-checks / etc.).
    2. It crashes / halts / stops your PC after a few minutes.  Drive usage remains at 100% even though Task Manager shows nothing is (able) to use it.  Your desktop becomes unresponsive and you have to restart your PC.

    That 2nd problem was the one I had on a Dell PC I'd just updated to Windows 10 AND from a hard drive to a SSD (Solid-state drive).  The two combined caused problem 2 for me.

    I solved this by changing a BIOS setting (turning off RAID - which I don't use) which caused a different hard drive 'driver' to be used.  Problem GONE (several weeks ago, and never returned).

    Now it may well be that my process managed to reset something else and the driver was never the problem - but I'm pretty sure it was a driver bug that perhaps didn't respond well to a SSD being present.

    My post detailing what I did is at the end of this thread:

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_10-hardware/task-manager-shows-100-disk-utilization-on-windows/f664d045-5eb6-43b5-8853-e297b0e6b241

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-04-17T08:38:08+00:00

    RPDM.

    I agree, and thank you for the input I have tried a ton of things it is not as prevalent as it was. I purchased a gaming pc because I want the processing power for other purposes and it would seem that the 100% disk usage is problematic when I am going to be needing that time on the hard drive and crazy difficult to define process are using it up, it would be nice to be able to halt those processes for an hour so that I can work and not have a project take three days to complete or start due to slow processes.

    However all of the suggestions have had a positive effect. I am not running at full tilt 80% of the time down to about 70% so that is good.

    Your response though was right on I feel, Thanks

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-04-17T08:47:14+00:00

    TheresaClark18,

    As a Microsoft Insider, I feel ya. I have had some frustrating days and weeks, and have had some really strongly worded feedbacks, but in the end each computer system is more unique than a fingerprint when you consider how we configure our systems and the software and apps and we as users don't need to be geek squad but should take a little time to know how the process works to better understand what that whole other side of creating an OS is about. You could join the insider program and that way at least you feel like your getting a return on your time and just maybe you will find you have a talent for it. Lol.

    Thanks for the comment much appreciated I don't feel so alone in my frustrations.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-04-18T10:30:13+00:00

    I took slightly easier route. Deleted google chrome and Facebook entirely. This improved disk performance by 5 %

    Then went to task manager ( control alt delete) clicked performance tab and then opened up Opne resource monitor. Then clicked on disk tab and that tells you what is eating your resources. One resource was eating 90 % of my disk. I closed it down and problem sorted. NB AVG takes up a lot of resources but you need some protection I guess

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