Weird Disk Usage Bug

Atalkez

So, my laptop is an HP 17z that I bought in January of 2017. 8G memory, 1 TB HD, AMD graphics, running Windows 10. Essentially the same build as this one, but no Touch:

http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-laptop-17z-best-value-touch-optional-2yn36av-1

So my problem is that I noticed my computer started running a bit slow recently, so got to looking into things. The last week it's been essentially inoperable, as my Task Manager is displaying 100% Disk usage even when no programs are open and the computer is idle. Booting up takes nearly 20 minutes.

I've scoured the web and tried all sorts of methods. I've run my antivirus several times, nothing there (offline Scan through Windows Defender, since everything else is so slow). I've disabled all start up applications, I've started in Safe Mode, I've disabled Windows Search and Cortana (reported elsewhere to cause bottlenecks) but nothing has worked.

Has anyone encountered this problem before? Did you solve it? What did you have to do? I'm very near throwing my hands up and taking it to a tech shop where I'm sure they will tell me the HDD failed and make me replace it. I don't think that's the case though.

Serin

http://hddscan.com/

Try this software out.  It may be that your hdd is just coming to its final days.  This should show any errors your drive is reporting but Windows may not be telling you.

Kayeil

I've had similarish issues. I have almost the same laptop as you, but it is a 15" instead of 17". I received mine in December 2016, so close to the time you purchased yours. Within a month or so I had to send it back in because of speed issues and some of what you're going through. I recall they replaced the motherboard, I forget what else. Even since then it has always been kind of slow, slower than I'd expect of a newer laptop with those specs. At this point I just say fuck HP because I have had their desktops over 10 years ago and hated them, not sure why I took a chance on their laptop this go around. My Acer with worse specs and older worked much better than this HP does. If you still have warranty at best they might replace some parts or reset the whole thing, but no guarantee it'll ever be as good as it should be. I definitely have issues with the disk usage. A lot of people online say it could be issues with Windows 10 or Chrome, but I am really not sure.

Tysandr

I must say, while I have a healthy distrust of Apple, my laptop has given me 6+ years of solid work and play service without a single problem. No other PC I have owned has been as reliable and I've owned 6 PCs.

[Deleted User]

Tysandr said:

I must say, while I have a healthy distrust of Apple, my laptop has given me 6+ years of solid work and play service without a single problem. No other PC I have owned has been as reliable and I've owned 6 PCs.

Ya, likely fucking story Mr Apple Salesman.

Minifie

Tysandr said:

I must say, while I have a healthy distrust of Apple, my laptop has given me 6+ years of solid work and play service without a single problem. No other PC I have owned has been as reliable and I've owned 6 PCs.

Have you been kicking your pcs and pissing in them? I treat mine like utter garbage and easily get ~3 years before handing them off to siblings. My little brother still has my pc from about 8 years ago, with only a new HDD and 2 new sticks of ram, although he uses it as a study machine and rombox now.

Serin

I just remembered I think a huge Windows 10 update has been making its way out to machine's lately.  I would check to make sure Windows Updates doesn't have anything pending.  It could be that it is just constantly trying to install the update in the background but getting stuck somewhere.

Tysandr

Minifie said:

Tysandr said:

I must say, while I have a healthy distrust of Apple, my laptop has given me 6+ years of solid work and play service without a single problem. No other PC I have owned has been as reliable and I've owned 6 PCs.

Have you been kicking your pcs and pissing in them? I treat mine like utter garbage and easily get ~3 years before handing them off to siblings. My little brother still has my pc from about 8 years ago, with only a new HDD and 2 new sticks of ram, although he uses it as a study machine and rombox now.

No, I do have a very low expectation of it though. I pretty much tell it not to fuck up when I'm running statistics, watch Netflix or playing Mudlet.

Accipiter

I had a similar issue a while ago, turns out that the SATA slot on my mobo was playing up, I plugged it into a different port and the troubles stopped. Not sure if that will help with a laptop though.

Atalkez

Update: The disk is failing

After running the CHKDSK executable through the command prompt, I'm having several read errors in various sectors. 

Doing a bit more research (and a full tear-down of my laptop), I've found the underlying issue!

The chassis of the laptop is smaller than the plastic outer portions of the computer. The motherboard sits inside this chassis, which when picked up properly (I apparently suck, I always pick it up in the bottom right corner with 1 hand), works perfectly. However, due to the size of my laptop, if you lift it incorrectly, you place inordinate pressure at key points along the chassis and plastic outer lay. There are small cracks all along the outside of the plastic, where the pressure from these movements has broken it. Eventually, there is no more plastic places to take the pressure, so it's been hitting the chassis directly. Because of this, the HDD has apparently been damaged slightly somehow, and is now beyond repair. It still works, just very very poorly, and will eventually fail altogether. I'm going to have to replace the HDD.

tl;dr I should just build a deskstop and buy a shitty laptop for school.

Nicola

Serin said:

I just remembered I think a huge Windows 10 update has been making its way out to machine's lately.  I would check to make sure Windows Updates doesn't have anything pending.  It could be that it is just constantly trying to install the update in the background but getting stuck somewhere.

This sodding update has turned my lovely PC into a brick that very nearly found its way out the window to die in the snow at 5am this morning.

Okay, maybe it wasn't this update, but I've been dodging the Fall Creator's Update for Windows 10 from last year because it would never ever complete and always restore the system back after (I was keeping up to date with security updates). But this past week Windows has gotten really aggressive with the updating system because 2 versions were about to be unsupported and 2 more due to go unsupported in a few weeks. This updating process including a new updater that downloads and preps for install behind everything you're doing that you can't cancel (not the nice normal windows updater that I can schedule to do things 50 days away from now), and the only scheduling you can do is putting the mandatory restart off for 90 minutes (at which point mine did its usual flop on the floor like a dying fish, and then restored back to previous version, where the updater awaited to enact its hellish groundhog day-esque curse all over again.)

So yes, definitely check if you're on Windows 10 and you've not updated in a while, this one is apparently important.

Atalkez

I can’t even open any programs currently. Everything loops out, even in Safe Mode (non networking). The chkdsk report was pretty cut and dry. Bad sectors = bad news.

I thought it was the update originally too, lots of people seem to have the same issue you’re talking about. It wasn’t though as I disabled all of it and nothing helped for me.

Ailea

You've already done most of what I would normally suggest; however, I do have one further suggestion!

Go into services.msc and change to manual for the following: (If already manual, disable.)

Background intelligent transfer service
Superfetch (just disable this..seriously)
Windows Search 

Atalkez

Did that, I actually went a step further and disabled ALL services that weren’t integral to the function of the system.

No use

Ailea

This might help for future references. Completely sorry to hear about the bad hard drive, man  

I know I found I couple of tips that helped my fixed my mother's Windows 10 machine that was brand new and using 100% disk space until I researched and worked on it.

Found some workable solutions here (including what I mentioned above) 

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3217684/windows/speed-up-windows-tips-for-a-faster-pc.html

One other tip that I did and found successful was to change the virtual memory to a custom setting instead of just keeping it as is: 

https://www.tecklyfe.com/possible-fix-windows-10-running-very-slow/

Hope this helps you or anyone else that's been having issues with Windows 10 running super slow and having a stupid and unnecessary Disk Space. 

Nazihk

I would replace the laptop,

Just replacing the HDD is a cheap solution, but the case is already broken in a way that kills off HDDs so I have no faith that this new HDD would survive being jostled around in transportation. It doesn't take much physical damage to trash a hard drive.

Tysandr

How big are your hands.

Klendathu

Tysandr said:

How big are your hands.

It would seem @Atalkez is the antithesis of the Donald - frail childlike woman's body, massive hands.

Minifie

        

Veldrin

try get ccleaner and do a reg scan, you can also just do a general hdd scan to see what you can throw out of temporary files

Serin

First, back up EVERYTHING!  The more you use the drive the bigger the chance it stops working