7 Tips to Fix 100% Disk Usage Problem in Windows 10

Using a Windows computer should be easy for most of us. However, dealing with problems is another thing. You might not know where the problems come from and what you need to do to fix it.

Recently, many users complained that after upgrading to Windows 10, their computers seem to run slower. They also noticed that the physical disk drives are running at 100%.

If you haven’t come across this situation before, you might think it can’t be right. Unfortunately, it is!

It seems that the latest version of Windows (Windows 10) has an issue with physical drives and somehow, those drives are being overworked. This problem leads to slow down the Windows operating system. It happens with all types of drives, including both solid-state drive (SSD) and hard disk drive (HDD).

When you look at the Disk column in Task Manager, you can quickly notice that the status of disk usage may be up to 100%, like the picture above, despite the fact that only a few programs are running, or even no program operates at that moment.

It’s a slightly annoying problem that makes your computer run slow down or even freezes.

Unfortunately, there is no way you can find out which program causes this issue within Task Manager. Therefore, in this article, I will show you a few methods you can use to diagnose and resolve 100% disk usage in Windows 10.

How to Fix Windows 10 100% Disk Usage in Task Manager

Fortunately, the 100% disk usage problem in Windows 10 isn’t a difficult issue to solve. Just follow the instructions that I provide in this post and see whether the issue goes away or not.

1. Turn Off Windows Search

The first thing you need to do is to turn off Windows Search. According to many Windows experts, there is a bug in the Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system that will result in a kind of searching loop. This problem will lead to an increased load on the physical system drive.

To turn off Windows Search temporarily, press Windows + X, then A and choose Yes in the dialog box that pops up.

2. Turn Off Superfetch

Sometimes, the Superfetch service in Windows has been determined as the potential reason for this 100% disk usage issue in Windows 10.

You can turn off Superfetch with the “net.exe stop superfetch” command in Command Prompt, without the quotes.

To disable Superfetch permanently, navigate to Windows Service (follow the method above), and search for Superfetch. After that, double-click on it, select “Disabled” from the Startup type drop-down list and then press OK.

Check again whether the problem remains or not. Otherwise, move onto the next step!

3. Run Check Disk with Command Prompt

To get started, launch Command Prompt with the administrative privilege by pressing Windows + X, then press A and select Yes.

In the Command Prompt, type: “chkdsk.exe /f /r” without the quotes and press Enter.

Sometimes, you will be informed that you need to restart the computer for using check disk. Just close all running programs and reboot the PC.

4. Reset Virtual Memory in Windows 10

Virtual memory uses your disk as RAM. When your computer runs out of RAM, it will use your system drive to store files temporary and will swap those files back when required. Therefore, it can be considered as the physical memory despite the fact that the performance can’t be the same.

However, if something goes wrong with the pagefile.sys, it can cause 100% disk usage issue on your Windows 10 computer. That’s the reason why you need to reset/reconfigure virtual memory settings to make sure everything is fine.

To get started, press Windows + E, look at the left sidebar, search for your computer name (or This PC, in case you haven’t changed it yet).

Right-click on it and choose Properties.

In the System window, look at the left sidebar and click on “Advanced system settings“.

From the Performance section, click Settings.

Then select Advanced tab, and click on the “Change” button.

Make sure the box named “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” is checked.

Tip: To verify whether the virtual memory is the cause of Windows 10 100% disk usage problem or not, you can uncheck the box (mentioned above), choose “No paging file” and press OK. After that, rebooting your computer to see the result.

5. Remove All Windows Temporary Files

I would strongly recommend you to remove all temporary files and then reboot your Windows computer. According to a few suggestions from users on Microsoft forum, cleaning up all Windows temporary files will help to resolve 100% disk usage issue in Windows 10.

If you don’t use any third-party antivirus programs but Windows Defender, you also should disable it to see whether it’s the cause or not. A friend told me that the Cloud-based protection of Windows Defender in Windows 10 sometimes occupies a lot of I/O and network usage, which may cause 100% disk usage problem.

Turn off both “Real-time protection” and “Cloud-based protection” options.

7. Change Settings in Google Chrome and Skype

I’ve tried this method, however, according to some reports from users, after changing the following settings in Google Chrome and Skype applications, the Windows 10 100% disk usage issue disappears and disk performance is back to normal.

Therefore, if all the methods above don’t work with you, try to change these settings in Google Chrome and Skype.

7.A.

In the Chrome browser, go to Settings -> Show advanced settings. Under Privacy section, uncheck the “Prefetch resources to load pages more quickly” option.

7.B.

Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\, right-click on the Skype.exe file and select Properties.

In the next step, choose Security tab and then click Edit.

From the list of “Groups or user names“, choose “ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES“, check the Write option to be Allow, which allows Skype to write to your disk.

After that, press OK.

Now, get back to Task Manager to see if the 100% disk usage problem is gone or not.

Tip: You also should disable flash in Google Chrome because sometimes it can occupy a lot of I/O usage and cause 100% disk usage issue in Windows 10.

Conclusion

Typically, your computer will never use up to 100% performance of your disk. In case you can’t fix Windows 10 100% disk usage issue by using the methods above, then the problem may be your hardware, especially your HDD/SSD. Possibly, your hard drive is getting old, and it’s time to replace it.

Besides, the high disk usage problem could be related to the defrag tool in Windows 10. Sometimes, your computer is trying to defrag the drive. However, it’s actually a solid-state drive instead of a hard disk drive. You can press Windows + Q, type “Task Scheduler” without the quotes and disable the scheduled disk defrag task, if available.