Question: Since updating to win 10, I’m experiencing issues with my disk usage. From time to time (sometimes every 10 minutes, sometimes once every few hours) my system becomes unresponsive because the disk usage is 100%. It usually takes one or two minutes for this blocking to be resolved.

If I have the task manager open, it says the read and write speeds are 0, but still my disk is being used for 100%. I’d expect there’s some process blocking IO access to all the others, so I’ve tried watching the performance monitor for heavy processess, but since I can only see the current read/write speed of each process/service, I haven’t been able to pinpoint any abnormal behavior.

Can anyone show me how to diagnose this kind of issue please? As you can imagine it does reduce my productivity, and to be honest I hate it when my pc behaves unexpectatly :p

Regards,klmdb

PS: I’ve googled 100% disk usage issues and came across many different suggestions (like disabling some windows services), but to be honest I’d prefere not to ‘solve’ the problem by cutting off pieces of the intended operation of my OS.

Answer: This is a known issue with certain ACHI devices. Microsoft has provided a solution: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3083595

If you follow these steps (taken from the article) your problem should be resolved.

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  • Identify if you are running the inbox AHCI driver (StorAHCI.sys):

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  • Open a command prompt with administrator privileges. Then type the following command in the command prompt window and hit Enter: devmgmt.msc

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  • Under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers right-click on the AHCI controller node and select Properties. This node is usually called Standard SATA AHCI Controller.

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  • Navigate to the driver tab and click Driver Details.

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  • If you see StorAHCI.sys in the list, you are running the inbox driver.

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  • Disable MSI for the controller in the registry:

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  • In the same properties window opened in step 1.2, navigate to the Details tab and select Device instance path from the Property drop-down menu. Note this path.

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  • Open the registry editor by typing regedit in the previously opened command prompt.

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  • Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetEnumPCIDevice ParametersInterrupt ManagementMessageSignaledInterruptProperties, where refers to the device instance path you noted in step 2.1.

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  • Change the value of the MSISupported key from 1 to 0.

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  • If you don t know which controller your boot device is attached to, repeat steps 2.1 through 2.4 for all AHCI controllers found under 1.2.

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  • Reboot the machine.