What is causing high disk usage and slowing down my Windows 10 computer?

[sandy stone]

TL;DR

Why is the system task slowing down my computer?

Lately it seems my Windows 10 computer been getting more and more sluggish. Checking on the task manager, it appears that the disk usage almost constantly stays at 100%, and that the System task is the biggest consumer. It is backing out applications I am using at the time. Is this normal? What the heck is the System task doing that consumes so much disk activity? And why is it taking priority over user tasks instead of operating in the background? Most importantly, is there anything I can do about it?

 

[jedishrfu]

Is your disk at capacity ie little free space?

Is it when using one program like a browser or word processor?

 

[berkeman]

It used to be that "indexing" as a background task took lots of CPU and disk bandwidth (in earlier versions of Windows). I made it a habit to disable indexing on my computers, and ignored the warning that doing so could make disk searches take longer. I don't know if this is still an issue in Windows 10.

 

[sandy stone]

Computer says I have 764 Gigs free out of 917. RAM usage runs around 60%, sometimes more, of 12 Gigs.
Issue does not seem to be associated with any particular program.

Late breaking news - I did a full virus scan using Windows Defender, which reported no issues, but disk usage (particularly by the System task) is much lower. All very mysterious to me.

 

[berkeman]

All very mysterious to me.

When you look at your Indexing Options in your Win10 Control Panel, what does it say? I got there by typing "Indexing" in the little Windows run box at the lower left of the screen, and selected Indexing Options:

 

[Tom.G]

Another possibility is a dying hard disk drive, although you can often hear them emit a 'clicking' noise, that is not always the case.

Try getting to a Command Prompt and type:
chkdsk /?
That will display all the options of the 'chkdsk' program for diagnosing disk drives.

 

[sandy stone]

Thanks for the suggestions, but it appears that performing the virus scan did the trick, even if nothing was reported (?). And to further muddy the waters, Microsoft evidently forced an update onto my system last night, so who knows what else changed. I'll continue to monitor the situation.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Microsoft evidently forced an update onto my system last night

Seems like this might have been the culprit. Windows will download and prepare updates in the background, telling you nothing of it. Only then it asks (or 'asks') you to restart to complete the process. This can hog up resources something fierce depending on the size of the update.
I think. Understanding Windows is closer to divination than science. But it's where my dowsing rod points to.

 

[sandy stone]

Sorry for the late reply. Your explanation sounds very reasonable. But it still irks me that we have these machines that are theoretically completely deterministic, but no one in the world can tell for sure exactly what they are doing.

 

[Tom.G]

Back in early 1975 my wife and I built an Altair 8800 from a kit. It came not only with detailed construction steps, but also a quite good tutorial on the theory of operation and of the Intel 8080 cpu instruction set.

Over the years the manufacturers have discovered that instructions, or anything else, is not needed. They supply a box and maybe a keyboard and display... and then run away. Almost as if to say "Have fun, sucker! We got ours."

p.s. A few years ago we dug the computer out of the closet, replaced some leaking electrolytic filter capacitors, and found that it still runs.

p.p.s. Maybe the makers are right... after all computers take up several hours a day of our time.