System and Svchost high disk activity - PC no longer usable

Hi,
For the last two weeks I'm experiencing a high disk activity from System (PID 4), Svchost.exe and/or explorer.exe
What's particularly interesting is that for the first hour after switching on the PC works fine and then one of these 3 services (or a combination of them) kicks in and renders my PC totally unusable.

Restarting doesn't help. Switching off/on sometimes helps but the offenders are back within an hour.

Here are the steps I've done so far:
1. Eliminated my antivirus (I ran the PC with the antivirus completely disabled and the problem persisted);
2. Uninstalled ALL software that I can live without;
3. Disabled Prefetch, Autofetch and Indexing services;
4. Ran CHKDSK - no issues found whatsoever;
5. Disabled Windows firewall.

I've also tried to break down the processes to see what is actually using the disk but Microsoft seem to have deleted most of the older KB pages. I found some utils here Sysinternals Process Utilities but I can't use any of them. They just blink for a second and then disappear.

Is there a way to break the processes down?

Have you experienced similar issues and do you know how to fix it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks...

If the suggestion by TZ doesn't help, i would run a System File Check (SFC):
SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker

DavidE, thanks, I ran the utility but it didn't find any inconsistencies.

ThrashZone, thank you. I've followed your instructions plus I've ran a registry cleaner and uninstalled more software.

It is much better now, so part of the problem was indeed the Windows auto-updater. However, performance-wise the machine is still very far from what it used to be prior to this. Ok, it's no longer freezing up, but the System is still hogging too much resources and everything I do takes twice as long.

What am I missing? Is there a way to cap the disk write rate?

We're is the file running from a lot of malware uses this but often not in the windows folders ransom ware uses it while it encrypts your files

Hi

BlackBerryQ10 said:

plus I've ran a registry cleaner

If you have run one previously then its possible that that was the start of your problems.
Unless you know EXACTLY what your doing and its follow on effects you end up in all sorts of problems

Roy