Hard Drive Activity - Long Delay When Going To Sleep
Apr 19, 2013
I noticed an issue with my PC. I always put my desktop into S3 sleep when not in use, normally this happens almost instantly, but now it takes 10+ seconds after the monitor goes black before the system actually powers down.
I had been using Windows 7, but a week ago I did an upgrade to Windows 8. I'm not sure exactly when this behavior started, but I just noticed it earlier today.
I have Hibernate disabled (powercfg -h off) as well as System Restore; so I don't know what could be causing this. The hard drive LED stays lit during the entire delay.
I am trying to troubleshoot an issue which has been bugging me for quite a while. Basically, I leave my computer on overnight and don't close it to download stuff and updates and also because I don't like the time to boot up.
Well anyways after coming back to my computer at the morning, my computer becomes almost like a brick. The hard drive activity is pretty much always red, everything lags a lot, mouse event, or any input. CPU is not having much of a usage, but RAM is almost full. I attached a screenshot.
I also noticed one of my hard drives, the one which is slower and I only use it for backup and no programs or games, is almost 100% all the time, while the other one which has windows installation and program files is not that intense in activity. Also notice the read and write speed is not that big, but response time is huge.
It only happens if I come back to my computer for a long time not attending it.
I disable system restore, Windows defender real time protection and sleep.
I recently discovered that one of my drives has been at 100% activity with no data being read or written. This particular drive is used for virtual instruments and samples for music. I've never had issues before, but I found it odd that loading projects took an insane amount of time to load, which lead me to check the disk usage of this particular drive.
Current response time spikes into the tens of thousands. Again, nothing is being written or read. If I open the drive, I can see all my files, but the drive never seems to stop "searching". I've attatched a picture below:
I am using a Surface Pro 3 running Windows 8.1 Pro
I have already turned off Connected Standby. I KNOW there has to be a way to get back the ability to make separate settings for sleeping / turning off the display.
To be clear, I want to have the display ONLY turn off after 3 minutes, but NEVER sleep my device.
I have installed a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 Professional recently (about a month ago). It's running fine mostly but there is one thing that keeps irritating me, whenever I leave my PC idle for long (like half hour or so), the system start to do something in background with hard drive light constantly lit.
This keeps going on until I come back and start doing something or it randomly stops doing it. This also happens during work too but rarely. I have heard that file indexing and windows update are possible culprits behind this issue and turned them off but it is still happening. I don't know what's wrong with this OS, it never happened with Windows 7 before.
I mostly use my system for gaming (Steam) and have no antivirus installed beside Windows Defender, in addition to that there is no 3rd party de-fragment program installed. When this happens during games it makes game performance sluggish which is the major cause of annoyance for me.
I usually boot my machine in the morning, use it for a bit and then leave for work. After a time, the machine goes to sleep. About 5 or 6 hours latter, WMC wakes the machine to record a TV show. The recording never happens. When I get home, the machine is one but unresponsive with no display. The power button does not shut the machine down. I have to long hold the power button to kill the machine. In addition, if the machine sleeps for a shorter period and I wake it with the mouse, it crashes and restarts. I had to look at a log to find out that the machine restarted because, again, no display.
What I've done: Updated the BIOS sfc /scannow (revealed errors) ... /RestoreHealth (fixed errors) Drive and memory diagnostics Checked my problem against this forum which revealed other crash at wake threads but I'm not able to interpret the log file...
Running a family PC, with different user login's. Users is leaving the PC even sometimes after logoff not putting the PC to sleep or switching on the PC, do not log in and leaves the PC running. (training of users, no result).
Task: Ensure the PC goes to sleep within reasonable time.
Sleep settings does not seem to work after user logoff. (3 different login profiles) all set to same standard "balanced" scheme. The standard scheme is changed/set to HDD off 20min, sleep 20 min, hibernate 240min.
A small app is called by screen saver logs the user off after 15 min inactivity with a 1 min warning screen. All working fine with logoff etc.
I had hoped the adjusted standard settings "balanced" was cascaded to the "logoff" state, but it seems to run it's own life after logoff, meaning the PC keeps running (screen goes black as set in the "standard scheme) however the power settings is not putting it to sleep, it takes hours...
The Ethernet card "hard wire" is set to not wake, the wireless adapter is disabled, lock screen is disabled.
Have also tried in the registry to set all default user schemes to = 5 (this was working in XP after logoff) but seems to have no effect in Windows 8. I'm not having Windows 8 pro, so GPO is not an option.
Here comes the questions: Case, after logoff I want the PC to sleep after 20 min. Where is the settings for "logoff" state (i.e. no user logged in and after user logoff) in the registry How to changed the setting in the registry, meaning Dword, name, value for 20 min to sleep
I have some questions regarding the new Chkdsk in Windows 8 (I'm using Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit).
note that Windows 8's Chkdsk has changed considerably since the previous Windows versions; so if you know about the Chkdsk in Windows 7 or previous Windows versions, this could not apply to the Chkdsk in Windows 8.
I also point out that I'm talking about the GUI version, accessible from the drive's properties Window.
My main questions are: when Chkdsk has finished scanning, and the results window appears, can I at once proceed with the following, or should I wait some time:
1) In case of an external USB drive, disconnect the hard drive (with "safely remove hardware", even if the cache is turned off), and turn it off.
2) In case of an internal drive (HDD or SSD), reboot Windows, or turn off the computer.
My worry is that if I would disconnect a USB drive, or reboot or turn off the PC in case of an internal drive, before the Chkdsk-related activity is finished, then the file-system of the disk in question could get damaged.
My doubts come from the following facts:
- I have been told that when the Chkdsk results window appears, this means that Chkdsk has finished working with that drive; but I have noticed that some short drive activity is happening some seconds (about 6) after the results window appears (should be a write activity, not sure if also read activity). I noticed this by observing the LED on my USB drives, and also by monitoring the drives in question with Windows 8's new Taskmanager.
- In case of disconnecting USB drives, I have been told that I can be sure that if some drive activity is happening, then the "safely remove hardware" feature won't have effect, and would warn me that there is disk access going on; but I have tried to select "safely remove hardware" while Chkdsk was in the middle of a scan, and the result was that Chkdsk got interrupted (with an error messsage appearing probably from Chkdsk), and the USB hard drive got removed. Though this seems not to have caused any file-system errors (I did another Chkdsk scan later).
You may think that I just need to look at the drive's LED, or monitor the drive's activity with the new Taskmanager, and take note of after how much time the drive activity ceases. Then I would just need to wait so long before disconnecting the USB drive, or rebooting or turning off the PC.
My problem here is that I'm not sure if the new Taskmanager, or the drive's LED, are sensible enough to detect even the smallest disk access, which could get unnoticed. I'm not sure how much I should wait... seconds? Minutes? What do you think? Perhaps there's no need to wait at all?
I did some tests by disconnecting (with "safely remove hardware") a USB drive shortly after doing a Chkdsk on it. Then I did another Chkdsk after turning it on again. I didn't get any error message from Chkdsk. But I'm still worried that there could be an unfortunate moment, during which a disconnection (still with "safely remove hardware") could cause problems, perhaps because in that moment a write operation could be in process.
I think I have read that the new Chkdsk in Windows 8 uses VSS ("Shadow Copy") to check the drives while keeping them online. With this new Chkdsk, I think it is possible to continue using the drive while the scan is happening, even on the system drive.
I was thinking about this: is it possible that the short activity which I have noticed after Chkdsk's results window appears, comes from this Shadow Copy Service, which is "unmounting" (?) the shadow copy used by Chkdsk?
If this is true, is it important to let the "unmounting" task happen, or can I disconnect, reboot, or turn off before it starts? And what happens if I interrupt this "unmounting" task in the middle, while it is in process?
Does it make some sense to wait some time after doing a Chkdsk, or can I at once proceed to disconnect the USB drive, or reboot or turn off the PC (in case of internal drives)?
I am creating a Windows 8 recovery drive on a new 16GB flash drive (The only option with my new refurbished Gateway NE56R49u Laptop). The process has been running approximately 5 hours now with the green progress bar being only 1/32 inch from complete for approximately 4 hours. Should I click the "cancel" tab and/or the "red X" to close the program? If I do, will I be able to start the process again? This just seems like an extremely long time to complete such a small portion (1/32 inch on the progress bar) of the process.
I'm booting off my SSD which is drive C: and I have games and programs on an extra hard drive which was origanally drive H: but after a restart it switched to I: and when I go into Disk Management to change it Drive H: isn't there.
I have a 2TB Western Digital My Book Essentials, it's filled with tons of old photos, movies, docs, games, and I'm scared to think of what else. The SATA to USB connector broke on it, so I took the drive apart and put it inside my computer. I opened up device manager because it wasn't showing up automatically and the 2TB is showing up as unallocated, I'm freaking out now because I'm scared the data was somehow deleted.What do I do?
edit: I realize also this isn't directly related to Windows 8 (besides the fact it's the OS I'm on), but I don't know where else to post it. I'd also like to say that I had a really deep feeling the drive was going to break continually for about two weeks before it happened, so if you have a similar feeling about something, don't ignore it!
I know there is good software out there to clone/image my hard drive and restore it to a new SSD drive. I'm just wondering though, since my laptop is brand new, I made a full recovery to a USB drive and included the OEM recovery partition.
Couldn't I just swap out the old HDD with the new SSD and boot with the recovery stick and do a full recovery back to the new SSD?
Also, however I do this, recover or image backup/restore, do I need to do some type of SSD alignment? I can't find a clear answer on that.
I have 2 PC's. Both are now running Windows 8. The main PC was running Windows 7 and I there mapped a network drive (z to the Windows 8 PC. It worked very nice. The second PC was also shown in "networks" in "my Computer" right after boot of Main PC. So network for sharing is set up properly on second PC.
After installing Windows 8 on main PC, it is still working, but the time spend waiting for the network drive is waaaaay longer now. The name of second PC "Photo-PC", is shown right after boot, but when I first click on the name, and get this error:
Networkpath not found. Errorcode 0x80070035
If I then wait about 20-30 seconds and then click again on "Photo-PC" then I have access to all shared drives, included my mapped network drive Z:
How can I eliminate this 20-30 seconds delay after boot?
I have given up setting up a homegroup, never had it to work, but "oldfashioned" network drives used to work
when plugging in my seagate freeagent hard drive i get the message "USB device not recognized. I have been to device manager and it appears as "unknown USB device (device descriptor request failed)". I have tried uninstalling it and reinstalling, checked for new drivers/updates.
I am new to Windows 8, and first time with a laptop. I have 1tb hard drive (minus a few gb) in c drive. d drive is being used as recovery
This is how it was setup. What I would like to do is to partition the amount of space i have from c drive into another drive.
Can manage to partition some hard drive space over to another driver letter, if i do a fresh install of windows, will this new drive be formatted too?
(Just asking this because when I owned a desktop computer, I had two drives. A c-drive and a d-drive. When I re-installed windows 7 on the desktop, all my files were still available on the d-drive, hence asking the above last question).
I have a windows 8 laptop and wanted to re install a whole new windows 8 on it. I'm going to use the generic product key than once installed use the one that i found with magic belly bean key finder. I am just worried that it might say something went wrong than have to buy windows 8 so could i partition the hard drive and than once i know the new windows 8 is good than delete the other?
A few months ago my laptop broke and it needed repairs. The HDD was replaced and i got my laptop back with one new HDD inside and one "broke" HDD in a bag. Later the "Repaired" Laptop crashed again so i bought a new one and took the HDD out of the old laptop. I bought a HDD case with USB connection and both of the HDD's where intact. The oldest HDD contained windows 7 and the replaced contained windows 8. Now i want to sell the Windows 8 HDD so i want it to be clean of personal files but i want it to keep windows 8. I thought the solution was to run the windows 8 on the HDD so i can use the program deletation program of that windows 8. The problem is i dont know how to run windows 8 of a hard drive. I have searched the internet but with no success.
I have two USB 3.0 ports on the front of my Dell XPS 8500 Dell desktop. Once again I have caused the USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller to stop working because I did not disconnect the external hard drive before shutting down, it seems. It reminds me of leaving in a floppy drive but at least the computer would not boot in that circumstance. Now, there is no warning whatsoever. Dell technical support's answer is to refresh or reset the machine.
Any way that would be less time-consuming than having to reinstall all of my applications.
My HP laptop computer glitched up yesterday so I factory resetted it.
Just today, it finished, and I went to install some games on it.
While I was about to install BF4, it said that there was not enough disk space, so I went to my "THIS PC".
It said that I only had 4.18GB available out of 99.6GB.
When I purchased my laptop, it came with 1TB. And I have been using 1TB up until now. But it randomly shrunk by 900GB. WTF!?
Link to image: [URL] .....
I have: HP ENVY DV7 NOTEBOOK PC WINDOWS 8.1 INTEL CORE i7 2.40 GHZ NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 630M 2GB DEDICATED VIDEO MEMORY AND I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE 1TB OF HARD DISK SPACE!!!
Short form: Why did my hard drive literally SHRINK 900GB!?
I have an external hard drive connected to my PC via hard drive dock on USB 3.0 port. Whenever I turn my PC on with the hard drive connected, my PC won't boot up because it is trying to boot up from the external hd where I have an image of both my Win 7 & Win 8 OS. How can I stop my PC from booting up from the external hd?
I have 2 hard drives and 1 is a lot bigger than the main one. I was wondering if I changed them around would my computer run faster and how I would go about doing this, what I mean is make my larger hard drive my default disk C if possible? [URL] ....
My wife just got a new PC running Windows 8.1 Pro and she wants to re-connect her external hard drive that has all her game files on it to the new PC.
While the new PC recognizes the drive it states that it needs to be initialized , doing so would wipe the data currently on the drive which would be unacceptable. How to get the new PC to recognize this drive and its data?
Recently lost my mobo due to a power surge no drives detected dead screen. i have a SATA to usb and can see my drive, and data is in tact but when i try to boot in the new computer (system recognizes drive) i get a( to quick to read message) something about the pc i think the issue is the computer im trying to put this drive in is about 3 years younger than the computer the drive was running in. when i use the win 8 recovery on a flash it loops. while running the flash quick message about pc(it does read from the flash but then fails) i was able to use the flash to load 8 on a formatted drive(in this computer) worked fine. and will use as a last resort but would really like to, of course keep all my drivers and settings and software settings etc
I have two Internal Hard disks in my system. First one is partitioned and used for system. i don't have problem on this hard disk. My second hard disk is 500 GB, and is not partitioned. I m using this drive for storing movies and music. The problem I faced is two of the folders are missing from this drive. THese two folders have several files. All other folders and files are intact. I just checked hard disk's used space and found to be 463 GB. I then selected all folders and viewed the combined spaces(including hidden and system folders) and I found it to be 389 GB only. Where are my these two folders? How can I retrieve it? Where is (463-389=74 GB) of space which is included in drive's "Used Space" metrics.
My computer is setup with two hard drives. My primary is a 120gb SSD and my secondary is a 1tb SATA. I use my secondary for all my data. Many times when I try to set a program to use that hard drive for storage, for example my camera software, it tells me I cant because I need administrative privileges. The same thing happened why I try to set my wifes iTunes account to store data on the secondary hard drive. We both have administrative rights so I don't understand whats going on. I don't want to go back to Windows 7 because I actually like Windows 8, but if this type of problem continues I just might.
I have a problem with System Volume Information in my Drive D: (239GB), enlarged from 5GB to 60GB (Check from My Defrag). and the free space down from 113 GB to 51 GB. I don't know how it works, it happen when my System is under Automatic Maintenance (in Windows 8). I want to save my disk space. I have check my disk using CHKDSK. i found error, and fix that. I check again, and found no Problems.
