Something causes 100% HDD load, system temporarily very sluggish

Hello to all and thanks for having me. I have a very strange situation and hopefully you will be able to assist me, as I have solved several issues before simply by browsing this very usefull forum. OK, here is the story:

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 since 2016 when I purchased all the PC components new. The computer had been running without a hitch until a couple of months ago. All of a sudden, the following scenario emerged:

- Upon loading Windows and passing the Welcome screen, Desktop appears, everything loads fine... and a minute or two after it, Windows starts doing something in the background. The HD LED turns 100% on, but I don't hear the HD doing anything. If I opened an application and this happened, the program would run very sluggish or simply freeze, showing the "Not Responding" message in the window title bar. All this "disk thrashing" lasts for about 3-5 minutes. After that, the HD LED returns to normal, the frozen apps come to life again and everything runs smoothly. This happens only once after boot and is very annoying, plus it sounds like something is simply torturing the HD.

Here is what I have tried so far:

- Thinking that maybe some background service is causing the problem, I disabled them all using MSCONFIG tool, as well as all the startup items. It didn't help.
- I run some disk diagnostic tools and they all reported that the hard drive is 100% healthy. I disabled the Windows defragmenter service because I am using Diskeeper for the job (disabling Diskeeper also makes no difference).
- Then I tried starting up some of the services manually to see if one of them would cause this state and several of them came into being. However, I think that they simply triggered the condition as they were all set to Manual. When the condition ends, all of those services remain at Stopped, so I'm guessing that none of them got started and caused the issue in the first place.
- Process Monitor did not help much because it only catched "System" as the one item that used the HD most, but I have little information on what exactly it is. It also becomes slow and non-responsive during the monitoring, so when the issue goes away, it instantly presents more than a thousand of lines that accumulated during the "non-responsiveness". Whatever is hogging the computer takes absolute priority over it and I don't know how to detect it.
- I did a full system scan with the latest Kaspersky Internet Security in trial mode, just to be sure there are no malware causing the issue. The scan came clean, which is expected because I am using this computer mostly for work.
- I cleaned the heatsinks of the CPU and motherboard to eliminate the possibility od overheating. Everything is running at stock speed.

Here are the situations which can trigger the issue:

- Starting any hardware monitoring/information software, such as AIDA64, Hardware Monitor, CPU-Z that looks into the system internals will invoke the situation;
- Changing a service's start-up mode by going into its properties. Upon changing its running mode and clicking on the Apply or OK button, the issue is triggered.
- "New Hardware Found" wizard tray pop-up (for instance, plugging in a new USB stick for the first time in any of the ports, installing a different graphics card, etc) will invoke the thrashing. Then I have to wait for it to finish in order to continue with the installation. But, if I wait for the hogging to finish and THEN plug a new external hardware, the new hardware popup appears and installs the new hardware in a matter of seconds because there is nothing hogging it.
- Simply waiting for a couple of minutes upon booting to windows and doing nothing will start the issue as well.

If I was doing something, if a dialogue was opened or anything else at the moment when the issue starts, the cursor turns into the "busy state" (rotating circle) and nothing can be clicked, everything is simply locked out of any user interaction until the thrashing/hogging completes.

Now, I thought that maybe my hard drive was going bad, but all the diagnostic software said the opposite. Plus, the issue does not happen in safe mode, so I guess the HD is just fine.

There must be some Windows process, feature, task or whatever the hell it is that causes this. I never use automatic Windows Update, I like to check the updates and their review online before installing them. Windows Search and Superfetch services are also disabled. So this really came out of nowhere, I can't put my finger on anything specific that I did which resulted in the start of this annoying issue. The PC simply becomes super sluggish and almost unusable until that unknown workings of something finish whatever it is doing. The only workaround is to boot and wait for it to finish (or invoke it with one of the "triggers" and wait). After that, the PC is super fast, running perfectly normal for hours.

Please, I beg of you, as I have run out of ideas, if you have any other thing I might try or look into, please help.

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance for any ideas.

Thank you for your input. :)

OK, I downloaded the Process Explorer and ran it. Upon clicking on Read/Write column, the SERVICES.EXE process emerged on top. I invoked the disk usage and started monitoring. The said process started at about 2000 and Process Explorer was alive for about a minute, reaching the value 4566 and then it froze (see the attachment) displaying a "Not Responding" message. I left it alone and as soon as the disk usage finished, it came to life again and showed that the named process used around 20,000 disk writes. Are those kilobytes, megabytes, or what?
The freezing effect makes it very difficult to see what is going on in real time.
Can you instruct me on how exactly should I set up this tool to display the most relevant types of data for tracking/monitoring? I ask this because when I click on Select Columns there are just too many tabs with too many options in each of them.

I have Windows Update disabled, and its service is set to Manual. So it can't download or install anything automatically, updates can be installed only if I specifically initiate and execute them.
As a previously suggested attempt to fix this, I downloaded and installed the "convenient pack" from 2016fdor Windows 7. This did not solve the problem, but the hogging time was reduced by a minute or two. It must be something software-based that loads in normal windows boot and causes the hogging, because in any Safe Mode option the issue does not exist, no hogging or thrashing the HD.

I also disabled all the devices in Device Manager that are "external" to the motherboard (ethernet, audio and alike) and left only the graphics card enabled. This also didn't help, making me believe that it is not a faulty driver or something (which, if it were, would probably make problems all the time while the system is on, not just that one time only).

If the SERVICES.EXE process is the culprit, how can it be fixed since it is a vital system file? And, it obviously works just fine in Safe Mode.

By the way, my specs are:
MB: GA-Z97X-UD3H
CPU: i7 4790K (at stock speed, nothing overclocked)
HDD: WDC WD10EZEX (1Tb)
RAM: HyperX Fury 16Gb DDR3 (at stock speed, nothing overclocked)
GPU: EVGA GTX 980 SC (at stock speed, nothing overclocked)

I only have 3 startup programs: Kaspersky, Realtek HD Audio Manager and the Power Mixer program for adjusting sound volume. Disabling these also doesn't help.

Hi

whats in your >> local << Task scheduler folder.


Roy

torchwood said:

Hi

whats in your >> local << Task scheduler folder.


Roy

Well, if you are referring to the C:\Windows\Tasks folder, there are two files in it (SA.DAT and some log file). The DAT file has the date and time of when the Windows was loaded, so I guess it is created on boot. I changed its name and then invoked the disk activity, and it still persisted.

There is also C:\Windows\System32\Tasks folder, it has many subfolders. I checked several of the files in thereof, they are old, some are a couple of years old.

Is there any other location I should look into or any specific task?

How much free space you have on your C: partition?

This is what I would do:
- Go to Services (%windir%\system32\services.msc) and set Windows Update to Manual
- Open Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Windows Update\Change settings and set it to Never check

Open a CMD window as Administrator and type
chkdsk C: /f
It will say that the disk is in use and if you want to schedule to next start = Yes
Reboot
Pay attention on the results, specially bad blocks, bad clusters etc

Back to windows, open a CMD window as Administrator and type:
sfc /scannow

Report

I have 204Gb free on my C drive. The D drive takes up the rest of the disk capacity. C drive only has Windows and programs installed.

OK, here are the results:

1) Windows Update Service was already set to manual;
2) Windows Update check was already set to Never;
3) CHKDSK reported no error;
4) Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.

Now, I found the CBS.LOG file and it is over 14Mb in size. What should I look for in it?

4) Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.
To fix corrupt files that sfc was unable to fix is a little complicated.

Run sfc /scannow 3 more times, rebooting after each scan. Some times it fixes.

OK. I tried the SFC command several times. It intermittently reports that it has found corrupted files and repaired them, only to report on the next run that it found corrupted files and could not repair them.
The disk usage did not change, it is thrashing as I type this. I am downloading this tool at the moment. I see that it even halts the download progress. This is so annoying, it takes absolute priority over system resources.

Good grief, If we manage to find the file or process responsible for this and sucessfully solve the problem, I will enjoy shredding it into bits.