Slow windows 10 on Laptop from day 1. Disk usage 100% most of the time (task manager)

[dave4me]

I did a boot trace, and idle performance trance.

I am most concerned on the idle performance, as it makes the computer too slow to work with.

I've placed the Windows Performance Recorder files in Google Drive.  I saw that the system is taking most of it.

Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2NnpUET2T_tVzNxVkJVQ3lJckk?usp=sharing

I also looked at the task manager.  The disk resource always shows 100%, but the leading process changes all of the time.  If no application is running, it states that the 'system' takes most of it.

Hope you can review the traces and come up with an idea....

Thanks,

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@Zinou wrote:

Hi,

If the above recommandations didn't solve your issue, try to download and install Windows Performance Toolkit. 

This is a tool I always use to solve this kind of peroformance issues.

Here is a tutorial to show you how to use this tool to take a boot trace. It's easy...

When the trace is recorded, zip it and share it. I'll analyze it for you.

Talk soon,

---

[dave4me]

[mdklassen]

> I also looked at the task manager. 

Did you also try Windows Resource Monitor?

Expand the "disk" section, and it will show you which files are being read/written at what rate (Kbytes/second).

That may give you a hint as to which process(es) are doing the most I/O.

[dave4me]

---

@dave4me wrote:

I did a boot trace, and idle performance trance.

I am most concerned on the idle performance, as it makes the computer too slow to work with.

I've placed the Windows Performance Recorder files in Google Drive.  I saw that the system is taking most of it.

Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2NnpUET2T_tVzNxVkJVQ3lJckk?usp=sharing

I also looked at the task manager.  The disk resource always shows 100%, but the leading process changes all of the time.  If no application is running, it states that the 'system' takes most of it.

Hope you can review the traces and come up with an idea....

Thanks,

---

@Zinou wrote:

Hi,

If the above recommandations didn't solve your issue, try to download and install Windows Performance Toolkit. 

This is a tool I always use to solve this kind of peroformance issues.

Here is a tutorial to show you how to use this tool to take a boot trace. It's easy...

When the trace is recorded, zip it and share it. I'll analyze it for you.

Talk soon,

---

---

Hi,

Did you get a chance to review my trace?

[Zinou]

I downloaded you traces and looked quickly at the idle trace.

One thing I noticed is that the high Disk I/O is caused by the system process reading the "
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb" file. https://jpst.it/164CV

The The Thread 80 of system process was performing a read operation on Windows.edb file (430 Mb), during 50s, hitting 100 % of disk I/O !

The Windows.edb is a database file of the Windows Search service. when the size of this file is too big it can cause problems !
So check the size of this file, if it's several Giga bytes then delete it and rebuild the index. read this posts:

https://winaero.com/blog/fix-windows-search-fills-your-hard-drive-with-a-large-edb-file/

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-files/how-to-clear-out-the-windowsedb-fi...

I will continue my analysis when back to home...

[Zinou]

What's going on ! I try to post a message and I don't see it anywhere !

[Zinou]

I downloaded you traces and looked quickly at the idle trace.

One thing I noticed is that the high Disk I/O is caused by the system process reading the "
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb" file. https://jpst.it/164CV

The The Thread 80 of system process was performing a read operation on Windows.edb file (430 Mb), during 50s, hitting 100 % of disk I/O !

The Windows.edb is a database file of the Windows Search service. when the size of this file is too big it can cause problems !
So check the size of this file, if it's several Giga bytes then delete it and rebuild the index. read this posts:

Fix Windows Search fills your hard drive with a large EDB file (winaero.com)
How to clear out the Windows.edb file in Windows 8 - Microsoft Community

I will continue my analysis when back to home...

[Zinou]

the rest of the analysis:

If you look at the CPU Sampled graph and expand the Thread 80 call stack, you will see that the thread is accessing NTFS file system to read data. https://jpst.it/165f1

And if you scroll down you will see two interesting functions calls:

1. The Avast antivirus (aswSP.sys!<PDB not found>), for file scan. we can't see function's name for lack of symbols;
https://jpst.it/165dU
https://jpst.it/165dq

You can exclude *.edb files from the AV scan, to emprove performance. you can take a look at the Microsoft recomandations for AV  Virus scanning recommendations for Enterprise computers that are running Windows or Windows Server (...

2. Intel Rapid Storage Technology functions' calls "iaStorA.sys". There is a big chance that your issue is caused by this driver. Many users reported performance problems due to Intel RST.

You have the version 14.14.5.2.1088 https://jpst.it/165ec . In the HP website, try to find if there is a newer version available for your Laptop model.

If you can't find a recent version, or the update will not solve your problem, you can uninstall Intel RST and replace it by the standard Microsoft SATA AHCI driver. Read this post Uninstalling the Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology driver - Microsoft Community

[mdklassen]

>  2. Intel Rapid Storage Technology functions' calls "iaStorA.sys".

> There is a big chance that your issue is caused by this driver.

Only on this point, I disagree.  If any application (or Windows service) wants to do I/O, the I/O is routed through this '.sys' file.  This interface only does what it is requested to do -- it does not "add" any I/O.  So, if something, such Windows Indexer, is trying to do a lot of I/O, then this '.sys' file is doing more work.

The "greeter" at the entrance to WalMart / Costco does not add any more shoppers inside the store -- everybody who enters the store passes close to this greeter, with only a very-slight delay -- because everybody steps around the greeter, to avoid impolitely trespassing into the greeter's personal space. Maybe 1 second of delay, while the shopper is inside the store for another 1800 seconds (30 minutes).

> Many users reported performance problems due to Intel RST.

Hmm.  I wonder how many of those users are "Computer Performance Evaluation" ('CPE') specialists, who really have done scientific workload tests against such a hypothesis.