Is this a problem with the hard disc?

[John Devalle]

A strange event happened. I have a Toshiba laptop with Windows 10, and last Monday it was moving excruciatingly slow, a browser or app taking several minutes to load and frequently messages of 'not responding' occurred and whatever I had open froze for a minute or two. Video played, after VLC or Youtube eventually loaded, but there was no sound, nor Windows sounds. I spent Monday evening searching the net for cause and solution, and,given the time it took on a snails pace pc, did more on Tuesday, when I noticed the pc speed was back to normal and there was sound. On Monday I'd discovered that the HD was at 100% and still was on Tuesday till suddenly it was back to normal, yet I'd done nothing to address the issue.
Anyone got any idea what happened?

 

[Trouble]

It certainly could be and you could run the native Check Disk utility and see what it reports
chkdsk C: /R

Is it possible or perhaps more likely that the computer was simply busied up by a routine update or even the 2004 upgrade which is rolling out more broadly everyday? That might account for the disk hogging activity that you observed and its' subsequent return to apparent normal.

 

[John Devalle]

Thanks for your reply Trouble. I did run Check Disk which said everything was fine. I did wonder if the temporary maxing of the HD was caused by an update.

 

[Trouble]

I'd just keep an eye on it. It could have been an update or even "the upgrade"
OR
It might have been a one off with some routine disk management running in the background.

Maybe use task manager next time and see if you can spot what's responsible for the heavy disk usage.
Processes tab, Disk column, click the column header to sort ascending or descending as you prefer
Does the system drive have plenty of free space?
Is it a mechanical spinner or a Solid State Disk?

 

[John Devalle]

Task Manager wasn't showing anything of heavy usage as far as I could tell. Memory usage was about 2.75 GB out of 4GB. There's a spinning disk (the fan wasn't making a lot of noise when the disk was at 100%) and out of 125 GB capacity about 50 GB is unused. The pc, brought second hand, is a few years old, but Crystalinfo reports the disk temperature is within the acceptable range, though only just at 40C.

 

[Grizzly]

From what you are describing I have to agree with Trouble that an update was causing that. It does not have to be a system update causing a load on the disk but a Windows defender update can cause that as well. I sometimes see a 100% load on my SSD when WD is updating. However it does not take long (few minutes at the most) and everything goes back to normal. On the other hand, an automated scan of WD can cause this as well....

Might want to look into that...

 

[Wolfie]

Hi John,

another resource hog is the Antimalware app from MS, it will take up an awful lot of the system resources when it is running, it doesn't ask to start, it just runs in the background, if you have a low powered computer, it can play hell with the system speed!.

 

[Snuffy]

A strange event happened. I have a Toshiba laptop with Windows 10, and last Monday it was moving excruciatingly slow, a browser or app taking several minutes to load and frequently messages of 'not responding' occurred and whatever I had open froze for a minute or two. Video played, after VLC or Youtube eventually loaded, but there was no sound, nor Windows sounds. I spent Monday evening searching the net for cause and solution, and,given the time it took on a snails pace pc, did more on Tuesday, when I noticed the pc speed was back to normal and there was sound. On Monday I'd discovered that the HD was at 100% and still was on Tuesday till suddenly it was back to normal, yet I'd done nothing to address the issue.
Anyone got any idea what happened?

I find that many of my Clients fail to defrag HHDs or TRIM SSDs, and even tho MS offers a (suppose to be Auto) many times it simply fails to run. so suggest start --> run __ type --> dfrgui.exe --> enter and see if that helps.

 

[JustinC]

The Windows update may have caused that.
These problems have been reported by many Windows users.
And you have a Toshiba laptop which is a disadvantage because Toshiba laptops are rare to get.
So your hardware may not be supported by the new Windows updates.
Better keep the laptop the way it is until a patch is released by Microsoft for the problem.