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100% disk usage and lag

Tags: Windows

Hello, I am having a problem with my computer since a few days ago, it is extremely laggy when playing games out of nowhere, I have not made any significant changes and tried reverting to a restore point from a week ago, which did not fix the issue, I have also performed several antivirus scans with kaspersky and windows malware removal tool, and it didn’t bring up anything, I don’t even know if this could help at all in this situation but I also tried the sfc /scannow command and it didn’t help

Aditionally, my disk stays at 100% usage for some time after booting the laptop, the programs that seem to use it the most are my kaspersky antivirus, system and other programs from the system 32 folder (where I already ran antivirus scans a couple times), I think another one was tiworker.exe or something

I have tried restarting or turning it off and back on a couple times and it didn’t help either

Please help me >.<, I don't know what to do anymore

Topic

Re: disk usage and lag

In reply to 100% disk usage and lag

The program tiworker.exe is Windows update. That’s OK.

Replace your hard disk with an SSD. First clone your current HDD and if that doesn’t help enough, reset Windows or do a clean install and install all your programs again.

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In reply to Re: disk usage and lag

I’m on a laptop so I don’t think that I can replace it, and even if I could I don’t have the money for it :/

Is just performing the clean install or resetting windows likely to work?

Just a detail that I missed, the lag isn’t only when playing games, it is just more noticeable, but it’s still there everywhere, it takes considerably longer booting up by example, and it happens even when the disk isn’t being used a lot in the task manager

Re:SSD

In reply to .

Surely a HDD can be replaced by an SSD in a laptop. It has been done in 2 of mine. If you can open the laptop, you can even do it yourself with most.

A behaviour like you describe can very well be caused by a bad hard disk. Resetting Windows or a clean install might not make a difference then. Replacing it by another HDD is only marginally cheaper than replacing by an SSD.

Can you post a link to a speccy, as told in https://www.ccleaner.com/docs/speccy/using-speccy/publishing-a-speccy-profile-to-the-web ?

I agree with Kees here.

In reply to .

This is a very common issue with old tech HDDs. In my view and many others this HDD has FAILED. Not a hard failure but a performance failure which you can verify by checking the SMART VALUES 01 and 07 (I use SPECCY to look at the raw values.)

When you get this (and your) complaint you pull up the SPECCY report and check those raw values 01 and 07. If they are off in the thousands you found the cause.

Clean install or resetting Windows might get some relief but the problem always returns.

Over the past few years I think I must have replaced hundreds of these drives. Almost all were by Seagate.

Reply

In reply to I agree with Kees here.

Hello, thank you for your replies, both of you.

I posted this really late and I went to bed right after starting a windows clean install, it seems to work fine for now, but if it will come back…I guess that doesn’t matter much, at least it still has warranty for around a month (it’s only 11 months old)

I don’t know how to interpret this but this is a link to my specs, I got it from speccy
http://speccy.piriform.com/results/EfjLgdzAfWpLby2illCjhqP

Again, I’m thankful for your replies, and I’m sorry not to have replied until now, I went to sleep and forgot about it after giving it a quick look in the morning

The HDD looks good.

In reply to Reply

But in the report is this:
“Installation Status: In Progress”

This is for an update that can make the machine feel sluggish and the HDD to go to 100%. On top of that, this is sadly normal for HDD equipped computers.

These Windows updates happen with regularity now so when you see this issue again, look for “Installation Status: In Progress” in the reports.

Thank you for your help

In reply to The HDD looks good.

I’m glad to know that at least the HDD is working fine, though the thing was insanely laggy yesterday, games looked like a slideshow, I know that my PC is a potato but fallout new vegas was literally having around 1 FPS on the lowest graphics settings (a game from late 2010), I loaded OSU because it normally isn’t laggy at all but it was also struggling a lot, not 1 FPS but unplayable and I don’t believe that a windows update could do something like that

I think that the clean windows install fixed whatever it was before, but I’m not an expert, so if you still think that the problem was that update, I will just assume you are right :p

Maybe the horrible lag and the 100% disk usage were somewhat unrelated?

Remember.

In reply to Thank you for your help

I only have this report to work with.

But updates in progress, 100% disk usage can result in big lags.

The SSD helps since updates are done in a fraction of the time.

Unless there’s more clues, the machine is fine for what it is.

[Author]

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