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So every once in a while I'll be playing Guild Wars 2 and I'll notice that the gameplay suddenly gets a little choppy, or I'll be browsing the web and I'll hear my hard drive start to make more noise than normal. I open up the task manager and, lo and behold, there's a system process with 100% disk usage. Opening its properties shows that it's ntoskrnl.exe. The 100% disk usage can go on for a long time - up to about half an hour - after which it drops down to 0% and everything is normal again. My question is, what could ntoskrnl possibly be doing that it feels is important enough to run right this instant and interrupt my precious gaming time instead of waiting for the system to be idle? Is there anything I can do about it?

Specs:
OS: Windows 8 Pro x64
CPU: Q6600 @ 3.3 GHz
MB: Asus Maximus Formula
RAM: 4 GB DDR2-1100
HDD: WD6400AAKS
GPU: GTX 660Ti

I have the same issue too. The task manager shows "System" using the most disk. Not sure what is going on here.

I don't really use W8 anymore; I assessed it for 6 months, tried to like it, tried to fix the broken UI with 3rd-party addons/apps, then reimaged back to W7 and it was like a breath of fresh air. I missed nothing from W8 when I switched back :\

As such, I can't really help you with your w8 ntoskrnl issue - but the obvious Microsoft "murder your disk with IO" processes have historically been dynamic swapfile resizing, indexing, and superfetch. Try fixing/disabling each of these in turn and seeing if it helps your disk behave.

Unfortunately, Sysinternals Diskmon got gobbled up by Microsoft and I don't think the older versions work on 8 - though you could always try it.

Thanks Chrispy_, I tried to disable the Indexing service but apparently I can't disable it without also disabling Windows Media Player Network Sharing service, which I use extensively... ugh. So I guess I'll start by disabling Superfetch and see if that fixes it.

And sid, I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem

I doubt seriously that its SuperFetch.

I'd be more likely to suspect of Defender or Windows Maintenance running in the background.

I haven't seen this behavior, but try opening up "Resource Monitor" when it's happening. It might give you a little more information.

been unsing win 8 fr 2 months now dint notice that problem recently switched to a ssd also
but i do have indexing turned off

this might help
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ ... try2931921
he seemed to find a work around by opening and closing his dvd rom

Etonmoistra wrote:

Nice posts. Keep posting such needed information. Thank's!

I like this guy. He's so positive in all his posts! ( *´艸｀)

To the OP, change your Windows power management plan to "High Performance" and see if the problem goes away.

To the OP: your sig says Windows 8. Are you not yet at 8.1?

Can we lock this thread (and maybe just delete these last few posts)?
The spammer just necro'd about a dozen threads with pointless, irrelevant comments to get his post count high enough to post links.