Solved: Windows 10 100 disk usage problem after windows update

By Gaurav P Last updated Sep 13, 2022

A number of windows Users report after Install Recent windows updates or upgrade to Windows 10 November 2021 update PC or Laptop Running Very Slow and became unresponsive for a long time. When checking Task Manager -> performance (Resource usage) users notice Disk Usages Almost 99%. Are you also struggling with similar problem looking for solutions to Fix the 100 Disk Usage Problem in Windows 10? Here follow bellow solutions to fix the windows 10 100 Disk usage problem permanently.

Why Disk usage 100?

Before performing, solutions let’s first understand what exactly the 100 Disk Usage Problem in Windows 10. What is the Reason Behind This Problem then we perform the solutions. Windows 10 100 Disk Usage Problem mostly occurs when your computer’s hard drive is constantly working at or near 100%, it won’t have any spare capacity to perform other tasks, even routine operating system tasks. This slows everything down and can make your computer totally unresponsive.

Also Sometimes, a process or an app in Microsoft Windows forces the system to utilize the hard drive to its full capacity. This issue, commonly known as 100% disk usage problem, can arise due to various reasons. It can be Chrome’s web page prefetch feature, a bug in a Windows driver, or some other Windows features. It happens with all types of drives, including both solid-state drive (SSD) and hard disk drive (HDD).

Post Contents :-

1 Reasons for 100% Disk Usage
2 Fix Windows 10 100% Disk Usage problem

Reasons for 100% Disk Usage

High Disk usage (100 disk Usage) is a slightly annoying problem that makes your computer run to slow down or even freezes. If you look for Reasons for this problem there could be various reasons for such High Disk Usage on your Computer, including hardware issues, Virus Infection, Third-party Applications and any of the following issues that are known to cause this problem in Windows 10 computers.

Superfetch and Prefetch: These services are included in the Windows 10 Operating System to improve the performance of your Computer by predicting tasks that a user is likely to perform and pre-loading the required applications into memory.

Background Intelligence Transfer Service (BITS): This feature uses idle bandwidth on your computer to check and download updates to Windows programs.

In addition to the above, high Disk Usage on your Computer may also result from the presence of Viruses and Malware and Corrupted Files or Sectors on the Hard Drive of your Computer.

Fix Windows 10 100% Disk Usage problem

Let’s Apply the solutions listed below to fix 100 Disk Usage problem on Windows computers.

Note: Bellow solutions are Also applicable to Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 Laptops and computers.

Check for virus Infection

Start With Basic Troubleshooting First look for Virus and Malware Infection. Many times a malware infection can be the culprit and you can do whatever else you want, it won’t fix the issue. Better to be sure beforehand in this case. You can use any good antivirus software for this purpose.

Install Latest updated Antivirus or Anti-malware And perform A full system scan, After 100% complete Restart windows and check it’s totally virus/malware free. Also, check on task manager -> performance Disk usage is normal state? Still getting same 100 disk usage problem fallow next solution.

Check Windows Services

As discussed before the main Reasons behind this 100% usage problem are mostly cause due to some windows services like BITS (Background Intelligence Transfer Service), Superfetch Service, Windows search Service, Windows update Let’s check with disabling these services one by one. To disable these services follow below:

Disable Windows Search

To determine if Windows Search is causing your 100% disk usage problem, the first thing you should do is temporarily disable Windows Search, and see if your computer speeds up. If it does, you can permanently disable Windows Search.

Note: Disabling this service will stop the indexing of all files. But you will still have access to search, which will take longer time.

Temporarily disable Windows Search

First open command prompt as Administrator, Here type bellow command And press enter key to execute the command and temporarily Disable windows search service.

net.exe stop Windows search

Now Check to see if your disk usage and the performance of your computer improve. If they do, you should permanently disable Windows Search as described below. If not, move on to Next Solution

If you discovered that Windows Search is causing your 100 disk usage error in Windows 10, you can permanently disable Windows Search:

Press Windows + R at the same time, type services.msc And hit Enter key to open the Windows Search window.
Here scroll down and Locate the Windows Search option, double-click it to open its Properties window.
Now choose “Disabled” from the Startup type drop-down list As shown below image and Check the service status if it’s running click on Stop.
Click ok And apply to make the changes.

After turning off Windows Search in Windows 10, the disk performance should considerably improve. The Windows 10 100% disk usage problem should be gone. Still getting the same issue fallow next solution ;

Turn Off Superfetch service

SuperFetch helps to decrease boot time and make must-load programs more efficient. However, it has been identified as a potential cause of disk performance issues in Windows 10 and later versions of Windows. You can stop the service by the following bellow and check 100 disk usage problem fixed.

You can temporarily stop superfetch service with command prompt if after stopping the service 100% disk usage problem fixed then you can permanently disable this using windows services.

To turn off Superfetch service open the Command prompt as administrator, Type below command and hit enter key to execute the command (stop superfetch Service)

net.exe stop superfetch

Same if stop the superfetch reduce disk usage then you can disable Superfetch permanently, To do this 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 to the next step!

Note: By following same way disable Windows update service and Background Intelligence Transfer Service. This is the most commonly working solution (90% working for all users) to fix the 100 disk usage problem on windows 10 computer. Also, Most users report disabling all four services (BITS, Windows update, Superfetch and windows update) At the same time is the best fix for this.

Disable Background Running Apps

In Windows 10, some apps are always running in the background. Microsoft designed Windows 10 to run apps constantly to provide notifications to users and keep those apps updated with content that they fetch from the internet. There are plenty of users who never use the Store apps, but they still run in the background and consume system resources. Let’s Disable Them And free system resources usage include Hard disk.

To disable Background Apps on Windows 10 open Settings -> Privacy -> Scroll down and select Background Apps.

Here you have two options either you can turn off apps run in the background app (this will turn off all apps) or you can manually turn off apps one by one using the turn off button as shown below image.

Disable Disk Defrag

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.

Repair Disk With CHKDSK command

After check with the windows services still getting 100% disk usage problem then Next we have to look at the Hard Disk For Errors. You can check and repair Hard Disk for Corruption and Bed Sectors using CHKDSK command prompt utility. CHKDSK command only check the hard disk for Errors do not repair them, We have to add some extra parameter to To repair them. Let’s see how to perform.

First 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.

Note: /F Parameter for force And /R parameter for Repair

Sometimes, you will be informed that you need to restart the computer for using check disk. Press Y then Just close all running programs and reboot the PC. Now windows will start the scan and repair process for hard disk errors and bet sectors. Wait until 100% complete the process. After that check the problem is fixed or not. Still getting the same problem to follow next step.

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 temporarily 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.

Right-click on this PC 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 the 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, reboot your computer to see the result.

Remove Windows Temporary Files

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

To do so, press Windows + R, type temp and press Enter.
After that, choose all files in the temp folder and then delete them.
Reboot your Windows computer.
That’s it!

Disable Prefetch

Windows 10 creates Prefetch files every time you run applications on your computer. The purpose of Prefetch files is to record information about the files loaded by the applications, so as improve the loading times of applications by making use of the recorded information. Again, this feature has been linked to 100% Disk Usage Error in Windows 10 and you may want to disable this service by following these steps.

Type Regedit in Windows 10 search box and then click on the suggested regedit. Once the registry editor is open, navigate to the following key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

Once you are in PrefetchParameters Folder, double-click on EnablePrefetcher. You will see this to the right of your screen.

Once you click on EnablePrefetcher, you will see a 32bit DWORD window with a value data set to 3. Change this value to “0” to completely disable Prefetcher Service on your Computer (See image above)

Note: You may also try to use value “1” – This will disable the Prefetcher service for only the Boot Files (instead of all files).

These are some Best working solutions to fix 100 Disk Usage problem on Windows 10 Computers. I hope after performing above solutions you will get rid of the High Disk usage problem on Windows 10. 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. Still, Have any query Suggestions Feel free to discuss in the comments below. Also read: