Windows 8: Hard drive at 100% far more often that in Windows 7

Hello

I have installed Windows 8 Professional roughly 4/5 days ago. I find that the hard drive is at 100% far more than when I was doing similar tasks in Windows 7.

My general tasks are:

Visual Studio

Sql Server

GIMP

Chrome

Windows Media Player

Internet Explorer

So nothing hugely out of the ordinary.

In task manager it simply says that 'System' is taking 60+%.

Is there a way I can give more information, perhaps a tool to give a more accurate dump etc...?

Thank you very much for your help,

Richard Hughes

November 22nd, 2012 6:44am

Make a xperf trace to see the cause. Install the WPT (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4847.install-the-windows-performance-toolkit-wpt-en-us.aspx), open a CMD prompt with admin rights and run the commands from here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2009/08/17/xperf-to-investigate-slow-i-o-issues.aspx

Run the script, minimize the CMD Window and when you have the issue again, go back to the cmd, wait 15-20s, press a key to stop logging. Open it with xperfview.exe and look in the Disk IO graph which files the SYSTEM process writes/reads.
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November 22nd, 2012 4:05pm

I have found disabling the "Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider" Service fixes the issue. Not sure why but I actually had this problem 3 times and formatted my lappy 3 times with windows 8. Each time it would come back after about a month of 100% HDD usage upon login and the whole time in windows.
December 15th, 2012 9:43pm

Hello

Sorry this took so long. I have done this but am not really too sure how to narrow down the problem with xperfview.exe. It seems to say that 'Event Type: QueryInfo' is taking a long time.

I could upload the .etl file, but it is ~178mb.

Thanks,

Richard Hughes

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January 24th, 2013 6:00am


I could upload the .etl file, but it is ~178mb.

Compress the file as 7z or RAR with the highest compression ratio. This will reduce the size a lot!
January 24th, 2013 1:27pm

Excellent, thanks!

I have uploaded it to my SkyDrive: http://sdrv.ms/Vv8fkG I hope that is OK?

Thank you again for your time,

Richard Hughes


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January 24th, 2013 4:35pm

please add +DISK_IO after DRIVERS in the command line. I also need this information.
January 24th, 2013 7:38pm

Hello Andre

I have done that. Please find the file in the same place: http://sdrv.ms/Vv8fkG

Thanks,

Richard

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January 25th, 2013 10:14am

I can see that your disk is 100% busy during reading data from the pagefile. Do you have memory pressure? How much free RAM do you have when you have the issue?

Also try to remove the Symantec Auto Protect driver and look if this fixes it.

January 26th, 2013 7:52am

I had a feeling it would be something to do with pagefile. My RAM averages ~75% in use.

I'll have a look into the Auto Protect driver and see happens.

I guess Windows 8 uses more RAM than Windows 7 does. I don't do anything differently. Perhaps RT apps add to the memory pressure.

Out of interest, what was it in the xperf file that lead you to this conclusion?

Thanks again,

Richard Hughes

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January 26th, 2013 8:00am

I guess Windows 8 uses more RAM than Windows 7 does.

Out of interest, what was it in the xperf file that lead you to this conclusion?

by default win7 and Win8 use the same amount of RAM. Here you can see that at the time where the HDD is busy, accessing the pagefile takes most service time:

January 26th, 2013 2:09pm

Wonderful.

Thank you very much for your help, I really appreciate the time you have put in!

I'll better utilize my RAM.

Richard Hughes

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January 26th, 2013 2:19pm

Wonderful.

Thank you very much for your help, I really appreciate the time you have put in!

I'll better utilize my RAM.


create a new topic here about the RAM issue. Please download RAMMap [1][2] and run it when you have the high Memory usage. Now save the data as a RMP file. Zip the RMP file and upload the zip to your SkyDrive [3] and post a link here.

If you see a high paged pool memory usage, use poolmon [4], to see which driver is the cause.

Andr

[1] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx
[2] http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2010/08/13/introduction-to-the-new-sysinternals-tool-rammap.aspx
[3] http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/4fc10639-02db-4665-993a-08d865088d65
[4] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2012/08/30/troubleshooting-pool-leaks-part-2-poolmon.aspx

January 26th, 2013 2:29pm

Hi Guys,







I have the solution to our problems, I also have the same problem



Just follow this steps im about to give.



Step 1





1. Open Task Manager > Services Tab

2. Look for "Browser"

3. Right Click it then disabled

4.Right Click it again then click open services



Under services



1. Look for Computer Browser

2. Right Click Properties

3. at the startup from "manual" change it to disabled





Step 2



1. Open Task Manager > Services Tab

2. Look for "IKEEXT"

3. Right Click it then disabled

4.Right Click it again then click open services



Under services





1. Look for IKE and AuthIP IPsec etc etc

2. Right Click Properties

3. at the startup from "manual" change it to disabled





after this the problem will be solved about win 8.1 process error.







Best Regards,



Andrew Aguirre













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March 4th, 2015 11:19am

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