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Ive started noticing this only over the last month, but it might have been happening before.

I have a few months old (~8) gaming laptop running Windows 8.1, and I do not use it often, few times a week perhaps. I have noticed that when I resume it from standby (or hibernate mostly) for the first few minutes the Disk utilization on the task manager saturates at 100%. In the "Resource manager" this appears to be called "Highest active time"

I assumed, initially this is because of skype, I use skype chat for work often, so when I boot this, possibly it needs to download and save all that, etc. Initially Skype was high in the Resource managers list so I closed that and now only open as needed. This has not fixed it however. I think now it might be due to my 2 gmail tabs that stay open. However the top of the list for most of the time is the very descriptive "System" so not sure what to do there.

I think this should not last this long, so I am worried if this is a problem I should be worried about. The issue fixes itself few minutes after boot, so Ive just let it be.. but I was wondering if there is a fix.

Karthik T
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  • What's the laptop exact model? What are the technical specs? – and31415 Feb 15 '14 at 17:27
  • Follow this and give me the file: http://pastebin.com/6vmuzcBp – magicandre1981 Feb 15 '14 at 20:08
  • @magicandre1981 Will get it to you asap – Karthik T Feb 17 '14 at 06:42
  • @and31415 its a customized version of https://www.aftershockpc.com/AFTERSHOCK%20XG17/ – Karthik T Feb 17 '14 at 06:43
  • @magicandre1981 Sorry its taking so long, I can only seem to reproduce this if i leave the PC off overnight (hibernate, could this be relevant) and if I do, it seems to generate 400+ mb files. Is this to be expected? The tool seems to just hang there until i right click -> close so not sure if its working like it is supposed to – Karthik T Feb 20 '14 at 16:14
  • files over 400MB are ok. Compress it as 7z/RAR to reduce the size before uploading them. – magicandre1981 Feb 20 '14 at 19:36
  • Hi @magicandre1981 the file is [here](https://db.tt/oCHjO3tu) – Karthik T Feb 21 '14 at 15:39
  • try to stop Skype before going to sleep. Does it improve the situation? – magicandre1981 Feb 21 '14 at 18:11
  • @magicandre1981 I tried that a few weeks back. It did help, but not fix, since "System" still seems to hog the disk on resume sometimes. Skype was definitely a big issue before. Now i was thinking firefox, but it doesnt appear on the top hoggers of disk list – Karthik T Feb 22 '14 at 06:55
  • in the trace the SYSTEM usage comes from the ETW infrastructure which are used by xbootmgr to trace the boot. Skype was the second tool with a high disk usage. – magicandre1981 Feb 22 '14 at 19:25
  • @magicandre1981 let me check again with skype disabled.. Only yesterday I noticed that the SYSTEM usage i was seeing, atleast in this case might have been steam updates. Even skype doesnt seem to have the same problem on my nearly a decade old linux PC, so curious about that too – Karthik T Feb 23 '14 at 02:59
  • @magicandre1981 I have uploaded a new set of traces at https://www.dropbox.com/s/zrtmvrm5nz070iz/TEMP.7z , could you please take a look at these? Steam should favor strongly, even though there were no updates running.. – Karthik T Feb 24 '14 at 15:21
  • the last trace is corrupt. You only uploaded the 2 temporary files. – magicandre1981 Feb 24 '14 at 19:08
  • @magicandre1981 i have uploaded it again, this time for sure not the temp files, please do take a look if you can. I think steam is another possible culprit https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1168249/TEMP.7z – Karthik T Mar 02 '14 at 07:42
  • the trace is damaged. It misses too many events. Use this command: http://pastebin.com/tZBxqyTS .It logs less data. – magicandre1981 Mar 02 '14 at 16:15
  • @magicandre1981 this command resulted in a lot smaller amount of data.. can you take a look? dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1168249/TEMP.7z I dont remember if the usage hit 100% this time though.. – Karthik T Mar 08 '14 at 06:02
  • The system is busy accessing the NTFS metadata (C:\$LogFile) – magicandre1981 Mar 08 '14 at 18:47
  • @magicandre1981 sorry for the long silence, but what does that mean, is that to be expected, indicative of fragmentation? hardware issue? (I was concerned about the latter, but I ran hd tune, and it seems to support bw of 100mbps, seems ok) – Karthik T Mar 16 '14 at 16:22
  • this is a good question. I never had this issue and because I use a SSD I don't run into the issue with my Dell Laptop. – magicandre1981 Mar 16 '14 at 18:49
  • possible duplicate of [Windows 7 is slow after resuming from hibernation](http://superuser.com/questions/543096/windows-7-is-slow-after-resuming-from-hibernation) – Daniel B Mar 13 '15 at 13:20
  • After resume it will cause a logon and trigger windows reliability monitor. Check the last events in eventviewer. If there are any bad sectors on the drive this can cause very high latency and delays. I had this problem recently on Windows 7 and fixed it by using chkdsk /F – John Looker Aug 21 '15 at 04:41

1 Answers1

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Update via windows store to windows 8.1 (for those reading this who haven't already).

And run windows update several times after each restart to obtain all the windows bug fixes. 3 times normally

Upon doing that you should be good. I'm sure you will have a 90% success rate with the above.

Also people have been reporting that live tiles (some times separate developers from Microsoft) are bugged. Thus disable live tiles for each tile app. You could update them in the windows store as well, might let you keep them enabled without problems.

Another common factor that affects disk usage like this is:

  1. anti virus programs (go into setting and change idle scan)
  2. windows search service (disable upon startup via 1.Run 2.type msconfig, 3.uncheck it in services tab)

Source: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/performance/100-disk-usage-ever-since-win-81-preview-update/88ce0370-8f47-4186-b902-0f6732cbbcbc

PathToLife
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  • That's a flailing around at random answer to a problem of constant disc I/O **that never ceases**. The questioner _here_ speaks of constant disc I/O **that stops after a few minutes**. – JdeBP Feb 15 '14 at 09:25
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    Of which could be caused when live tiles or antivirus or windows search activate periodically. Never the less I believe this answer is appropriate for this particular situation. - due the the generic nature of this answer. No need to vote down man.. I will leave super user if people are too harsh. – PathToLife Feb 15 '14 at 21:42
  • Have done this already.. hence "running Windows 8.1" – Karthik T Feb 16 '14 at 04:28
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    @KarthikT Give me the trace, otherwise you'll never see what causes it. – magicandre1981 Feb 16 '14 at 17:00
  • ^ Looking forward to seeing magicandre1981 results uploaded soon! This is a awesome tool. – PathToLife Feb 20 '14 at 09:42