Undeniably, computer hanging is one of the worst problems a computer user may encounter in any Windows operating system. Although you could eliminate this problem by upgrading some parts of your computer, such as adding more memory and upgrading the processor but sometimes even doing this, still your computer is sluggish.
Investigating, you discover that your system disk is running at 100%. You’ll be depressed and you’ll probably think that your computer had a terrible problem. And so you would ask, what’s going on my computer.
Fact-finding and Fix 100% disk usage in Windows 10
- Right click the taskbar, click Task Manager (alternatively press and hold Ctrl+Shift+Esc). Note that this may take some time to open with the drive being slow.
- In the Task Manager, on the first tab, Processes, check the Disk column and click where it shows 100% to order it in priority of which processes are using the disk. It is colored red to indicate whether you have a problem or not.
- Look for programs or processes consuming the disk (processes with high MB/s).
- If a program is hogging the disk, right-click it and select ‘End task’ (if you could still access your active programs, better close them first before doing this).
- If your disk usage goes down, check the app or program for errors and reinstall if necessary.
Task Manager won’t always flag up a program or process that it utilizing all your disk so you may need to play a little. First, run an antivirus scan to ensure it isn’t malware or Bitcoin miner using your disk. Then run a malware scan if you have one just to make sure.
Additional solutions to 100% disk usage in Windows 10
If your disk is still showing 100% disk usage, try one or all of the following.
We will use Windows command prompt (cmd.exe) in order to run the programs needed. Here’s how to open command prompt: Click on Start, type cmd.exe in the search box, right click cmd.exe, click Run as administrator, command prompt (CMD)as an administrator.
- Disable Windows Search,enter: [ net.exe stop “Windows search” ] in the command prompt window.
- Disable Superfetch, enter:[ net.exe stop superfetch ] in the command prompt window.
- Stop Flash Player, by right clicking Adobe Flash Player in Task Manager and selecting End Task or:
- Disable Flash plugin in Chrome, in Google Chrome, go to the address bar and enter [ chrome://plugins ], look for Adobe Flash player plugin, click the Disable button, the Adobe Flash Player entry will be grayed out.
- Security software actively scanning for viruses or malware, might be utilizing the majority of the Disk, especially scanning large disk nearly full capacity.
(Note: These programs cannot be terminated as most of it are contains protected processes)
Important notes in this tutorial:
- There are a number of reasons why your disk might be showing 100% usage, covered here are the most common.
- Do not include [ ] in the command prompt