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

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.

0 comments

491 answers

Sort by: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2016-05-06T06:14:54+00:00

    Hi alex51865,

    The only thing that I didn't like about this was adjusting the system performance to best performance.  I found that the quality of the print of letters on my screen was greatly reduced.  So I set it back.

    I have now turned off so many features.  Not only the ones that you have described, but a couple of others too.  Right now, the system is performing satisfactorily.  But one has to wonder how Microsoft can design a system that performs so poorly when all features are turned on.  Either this is all unnecessary bloatware (probably) or there is a bug.  But they really need to look at this.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2016-05-12T17:28:55+00:00

    Like Emily, I don't have Skype or Firefox running.  I tried other solutions I found online:

    • Increase the size of the paging file
    • Disable SuperFetch and Windows Search in Services
    • Disable Prefetch in the registry

    Nothing worked.

    I moved the paging file to my non-system drive, and I increased its size to about 5x the recommended size.  Disk usage on the system drive is now in low single digits when I haven't asked the computer to do something, and the drive with the paging file looks totally bored.  My machine is back to its awesome former state.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2016-05-12T17:57:42+00:00

    I had this problem again just a couple of days ago.  It's now the third or forth time that this has happened.

    I again ran msconfig and unchecked all of the non Microsoft services that I could find under the services tab.  It's running well again, so I've given permission for a few of those services to start up again.

    However, I've now done one additional thing.  I've uninstalled Java because when I had the slow down, task manager was showing that Java Web Site Launcher was running many, many times.  And that list was getting longer.  A reboot didn't solve that problem.  Had to reboot into safe mode in order to run msconfig.

    Now I'm waiting to see if I miss anything by not having Java installed.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2016-05-12T20:43:11+00:00

    What an indictment that there are 205 (now 206) comments. An amazing product if it takes this amount of time to NOT resolve the issue.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2016-05-13T14:08:03+00:00

    Bill, 

    Some of the posts are from people like me who have the problem for 5 minutes and then goes to normal.  Some have posted several times.  There are currently 270 million users of Windows 10, and there are ONLY 206 comments. 

    Most here have taken off programs as the remedy.  My point is that this is probably not even the fault of the Operating System itself considering how few posts there are.  Skype, Chrome, all the programs people say to take off I still have. There are so few posts that is could be BIOS, specific Hard Drive Manufacturers software, etc., and not even the O/S.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments