What's going on with my Windows 10 laptop!!

Dieselboy · April 12, 2016, 12:14:09 AM

All the time while I was away, Windows kept freezing and doing weird things. Turning the laptop on took around 15 to 20 minutes before it would start to allow me to use it in terms of opening things, clicking etc. I took this as it needed a re-image, ie too much crap installed and too many services starting at boot time.

So I've done the re-imaging and it's not really any better even with a base Win10 image. Now I'm unsure if it is a motherboard problem or disk problem. I notice that the task manager says disk is mostly 100% utilised (screenshot) included. In the screenshot you can see that the latency is high (seen up to 14000ms response time!) but the "read and write" speeds are low. When I was copying back my backed up data from a USB HDD, I was seeing again 100% active but the write speed would be up to 80mbps which I thought was normal for a regular HDD, it's probably 5400rpm.
I never bothered to take note of what the disk usage was like when it was running fine. But when this disk is 100% utilised the system is unusable. I can move the mouse fine but cannot click anything as things begin to go "not responding". I was thinking that the disk is failing. But SMART is saying "OK".

I was also thinking it could possibly be a motherboard bios problem so going to look for an update.

Any ideas?

GeorgeS · April 12, 2016, 03:05:02 AM

Had a similar issue on windows 8, do not remember how i fixed it but i found the solution in the following site . Maybe you can try those links
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2813275/disk-usage-100.html
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3083595

Dieselboy · April 12, 2016, 04:21:27 AM

thanks mate,
Actually I think this is getting worse so hopefully I have a catastrophic failure soon so I know what the problem is.

Thanks for the links. I stopped both windows search and superfetch and didn't notice a change at all. The highest disk usage in terms of bytes a moment ago was powershell at 0.2mbps (probably running a GPO) but the disk is red at 100% active.

I'm not sure how the task manager works out that it's at 100% capacity but I don't think it's lying as it takes me a few minutes to press start and then type services.msc. :-s

icecream-guy · April 12, 2016, 07:21:17 AM

run a chkdsk /R on the disk and let it run and complete, I've had experiences like this when there is a bad disk spot in the swap file area.
other possibilities would be some sort of malware, run malwarebytes and check that too.

deanwebb · April 12, 2016, 08:07:04 AM

You *do* have an offline backup of your data files, right?

Dieselboy · April 12, 2016, 08:47:04 PM

Yes I do have a backup

I've run scans but not a chkdsk. will do that now.

It's a bit better after windows updates but still sluggish. Hope the disk is bad so I can request an upgrade to an SSD

Regarding malware - I done a fresh install of Windows 10. The malware might be all that DRM crap?

thanks all

Dieselboy · April 12, 2016, 10:40:05 PM

Replacing the disk had zero effect.
Replacing the RAM made it worse (may be because I went from 16GB on 2 sticks to 4GB).
Done a bios update too but no effect.

I've turned off notifications "show me tips about windows" and all others on that system settings page within Windows, as well as disabled windows search and superfetch and the result is around 50% disk utilisation now, so the system is somewhat usable. However just clicking the start menu causes utilisation to shoot up to 90 to 100% for a brief moment.

So based on the above, the next thing I can think of is that it seems like motherboard has had it.

Spoke to the big man, he says put in a hardware requisition form for a replacement.

Are there any diagnostic tools that could give indication that the motherboard is causing the problems?

deanwebb · April 13, 2016, 08:18:21 AM

Are there tools? Yes.

Have I ever used them? No.

A problem that can be solved by writing a check wasn't a problem. It was an expense.

Dieselboy · April 13, 2016, 10:05:33 PM

Quote from: deanwebb on April 13, 2016, 08:18:21 AM
Are there tools? Yes.

Have I ever used them? No.

A problem that can be solved by writing a check wasn't a problem. It was an expense.

My problem is, I don't like spending money without justification. Yes my laptop is unusably slow but I would like to say the problem is X and it would cost this much to repair and this much to buy new.
Laptop is usable since disabling those services but it's still sluggish, especially for a high spec machine. I'm going to keep using it and see what happens. I'm kind of expecting eventual catastrophic failure, which is then easy to call it an expense.

Otanx · April 13, 2016, 10:48:26 PM

Time = money. How much is your time worth? Spend 2 days to determine the motherboard is bad, plus the cost of a new motherboard, plus the time to install new motherboard, or just buy a new system copy my files, and done.

-Otanx

Dieselboy · April 13, 2016, 11:12:10 PM

Spot on, Otanx

deanwebb · April 14, 2016, 08:24:39 AM

That's why we RMA everything around here. Faster than troubleshooting.

Dieselboy · April 16, 2016, 07:36:07 AM

Sometimes it's true though! And if you're soon to be going out of warranty, it's better to do the RMA to be safe else not do the RMA and find out later that it should have been.

Dieselboy · April 18, 2016, 10:02:44 PM

This week my laptop is being a good little laptop. Absolutely no idea why either.

deanwebb · April 19, 2016, 08:39:32 AM

Hardware issue for sure, in my reckoning. Hardware about to fail is random as hell. It has good days and bad days and even stretches where you think that it's all better again, but over time, the frequency and intensity of bad things increases.

Time to back up everything, not to add anything new, and get that replacement ready to go.