I run this copy of Windows 8 Professional in a virtual machine and every time I leave that VM for just a couple of minutes the OS starts using up an enormous amount of HDD that significantly slows down my host machine. It turns out that Windows 8 begins what they call "Scheduled scan" when there's no user input:

and as soon I switch back to the VM with Windows 8 the HDD "hogging" stops. Obviously this is very annoying!

In light of this, I'd like to ask how to stop this background scanning?

PS. I tried going to the Action Center and schedule maintenance for 3AM or something remote but that doesn't seem to have any effect.

A. Go to Action Center -> Security and set security plan. (Alternatively inspect Scheduled Tasks or change priority)

B. You can assign more resources to virtual machine

Regards

Click Start in the prompt, type "Task Scheduler". Click the Task Scheduler. Click the Task Scheduler Libran, find the "Scheduled scan" and remove or disable.

• Marked as answer by ahmd0 Thursday, January 24, 2013 6:53 AM

Thanks, killed that annoying s#%t!

Hi, I am also facing same problem. It's very annoying. How did you find the "Scheduled scan" in Task scheduler? I did not find anything named scheduled scan there.