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
    2015-11-08T17:37:07+00:00

    The only thing that worked for me was to disable the Windows Defender. It will be enabled again after sometime, and then the disk usage goes up to 100%.

    But there should be another solution, Windows Defender is a MS application and I should not be disabling it to bring down disk usage.

    The laptop I am using is a MS Signature edition Dell i7347-10051sLV with 8GB RAM

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-08T20:34:29+00:00

    Disk going to occasionally 100% can be quite ok if the computer keeps running and eventually gets under control....but did your machine hang (unable to do virtually anything as mine does) ?

    Defender did that to me  .... I replaced it with Panda Antivirus and thought all was ok..  but eventually the same thing happened. Many of the solutions portrayed in this thread seem to solve the problem for as long as a few days....then all hell breaks loose again.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-11-09T13:20:53+00:00

    Hi,

    My laptop, a year old AMD 10, gets under control at around the 2 minute mark.  I am not having any issues at all using Windows 10 after that.  I am just using Windows Defender.  My original Windows on this PC was Windows 8.1, and the Microsoft Store upgraded the O/S on this particular O/S.  The Operating System is the 64 bit version of Windows 10, according to system settings.

    I did have an older laptop that seemed to get hot, a Toshiba AMD X64 Duo Core, (2.0 Ghz), (Vista), when I put the ISO for Windows 10, 64 Bit on it.  It ran super, but hot, and the new battery would only last a hour.  After 2 weeks I went back to Vista, and the old laptop is again working fine again, and the battery lasting 3 hours.

    The other laptop I upgraded myself was an Acer Netbook 1.66 Mhz. Atom, 1 GB RAM, and it is running more robust with Windows 10 than when it had Windows 7 on it. 

    I was going to say that the problem might be Windows 10, 64 bit, however, when I check Settings in my AMD 10 it does say I am using a 64 bit operating system, and 7.19 GB are usable, so I do not know the answers on this issue.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-11-10T02:21:12+00:00

    True. These solutions seemed to work fine; but only for a while.

    For me the disk usage stays 100 for about 5-10 mins, and it ocassionally goes up sometimes but doesn't hang. Mine is a 64bit machine

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-11-10T02:44:03+00:00

    Hi,

    For me it was 100% for 5-10 minutes until I tried that Google Chrome fix.  That reduced the time to more like 2-3 minutes.

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