High Disk Usage But Not Really Much Use?

How do I open resource monitor? Is it installed on Windows by default, or do I need to download the utility myself?

There are tons of instances of PluginCommunication.exe. When it topped the list in Resource Monitor, it topped the list in Task Manager, but it seems like Task Manager only shows the top instance rather than all instances. Is that the case?

Just a little bit ago, Resource Monitor listed disk usage hovering around 10MB/s, but the graph showed total usage generally below 50%. I didn't think disk communication speed went that high. Is the graph based on the motherboard's handling speed of the disk information or is it based on the limitations of the communication pipeline?

My computer just took off again with the disk usage issue. This time, the culprit is Windows host process (Rundll32).

One thing I really do like about Resource Monitor over Task Manager is that it shows a percentage meter alongside the actual numbers (such as 32MB/s Disk I/O next to a meter showing about 40% usage). Unfortunately, Task Manager is showing Resource Monitor as responding like normal, then not. It's flipping to not responding for about 10s to well over a minute, with only a few seconds of normal response between fits. But none of the measured resources are peaking (the highest is the memory @ 89%)

The Windows host process (Rundll32) only held up my disk usage at max for a couple minutes, but that's still a long time to hold disk usage at 100%, regardless. Yesterday, I had to do a hard shutdown of my computer to get anything to work (it seemed to be triggered by me saving a .gif--btw, I stole your profile pic...).

I thought it was odd that it would be triggered by an image download, but it either was truly the problem, or it was a coincidence that happened twice. The first time had my computer stuck for over ten minutes, which led me to do a hard shutdown. The second time only lasted somewhere 2-3 minutes, and I let it work itself out.

Avast isn't kicking out any issues, so I highly doubt that it's a virus. Well, that, and my computer has been doing this on and off for over a year. I just finally got sick of having it happen and not finding any fixes online, so I posted about it here.

Ummm...I'm watching Resource Monitor in Task Manager, and it seems to be tying up around 25% of my CPU.... It hasn't stopped yet, and it's been like that for over a minute. Is that a thing that Resource Manager does? It seems kinda backward...

I think I've found a connection between me downloading that .gif and my disk usage freezing up my computer. It's not a cause--it's just a connection. I use Google Chrome on my work computer because it's the only one that (as of a while back) ran light enough to not freeze up my computer on a regular basis.

I just discovered that when I use Chrome to upload or download a picture from a site (when it asks for a location to pull from or save to), it seems to then run the disk usage way up and freeze the computer. A little over an hour ago, I was posting in a Facebook group and was required to add a picture. When I clicked on the "Add Picture" square in the post segment, it opened up the default location on my HDD, and my computer's disk usage shot up into the 90s and went unresponsive to the point where my mouse would only move in jumps about every 30 seconds. I'm also streaming talk radio, and that stopped streaming altogether.

I went away to do some other work, so I don't know how long that lasted. I just sat back down and my computer had finished working through whatever it needed to work through. The talk radio had resumed some time ago, as I could hear it from the hallway outside my office. But when I selected the picture to upload to Facebook and hit "Open," my computer rose again. The radio had halted at an annoying point when he was talking, so it made that mechanical noise when audio gets stuck.

The radio stopped for only about a minute, but since then, it has been starting and stopping, and the mouse is still jumping occasionally rather than moving smoothly like it should be doing. I clicked on Task Manager (Resource Manager isn't open, and there's no hope to open it while this is going on), and I'm still waiting on it to pop up. It's been probably about seven minutes since I clicked "Open," and it's still not back to normal. I'm hearing the disk read/write like crazy, so I'm guessing without confirmation that it is the disk usage causing the issue. But I'm also at a loss as to the process sticking because Task Manager will not come up.

Scratch that: chrome and Thunderbird ar both listed as not responding (as of about 11 minutes), and the top disk usage processes are generally hovering around 10-15%, with most being 5% or less. But disk usage is listed at 99%, so I'm sure a bunch of applications are sharing the problem. And the list of processes are constantly changing, with some high rollers including "System" (just peaked at 85.4% but quickly disappeared and has now come back again at the same level), Spotify, Avast, Service Host: Local Net(work?), Google Chrome, and more.

Is there some massive read/write process that Windows 10 does on occasion, like maybe unloading apps and reloading them? I've noticed that my browser tabs sometimes reload like the tabs on my iPad always do when I leave the app momentarily and return to it. It's like the cached pages are dumped even though I haven't closed Chrome or something. Maybe it has something to do with my memory not functioning properly? My memory is typically marked between 70%-90%.

I've also noticed that around the same time that all this started up like crazy a few weeks ago, my Chrome windows are resized slightly, with a gap appearing between the window bottoms and the taskbar (I typically run windows side-by-side, whether snapped or just resized).

Btw, Chrome is still not responding, as of about 20 minutes after the moment I clicked on Open.

And I'm writing this on my iPad. That's why it's taking so long to get these responses in, in addition to watching everything happen in real time.

Just went to upload a picture to yet another site, and the same thing is now happening again, except that it let me open a separate target folder before freaking out. I'll try a different browser either later today if I have time or some other day and let you know how that does.

I uploaded a video from my ipad showing the windows flashing while my computer's doing whatever it's doing. I don't know why it would be doing that, but most of the windows were doing it in this video. If you look closely, you can also see the gap between the windows and the taskbar, too.

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-PBQ-YpXWE#action=share"][/video]

I just tried uploading a picture to Facebook with Firefox, and it spat out a variation on the problem I've had with Chrome.

When I first clicked on the picture button on FB, the disk usage jumped (based on my hearing, not looking at any resource monitor applications), but it still allowed me to go to a different target location. Once I hit that location, then the computer froze with lots of disk usage (again, based on hearing not on monitoring), including the cursor freezing/jumping, Task Manager not opening, and everything else just generally not working.

And an error popped up when it finished saying that a script was having issues (this has happened the last few times in Chrome as well, so this is not unique to Firefox, though it has only been happening recently): https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v2/yg/r/_l7a4kcbtnV.js:97. Does that script look like it is a FB-specific script? I don't know much about scripts at all, so the best I could say about it is that it includes "fb" in the main section of the URL and that it is supposed to be a secure connection.

But here's the big difference with this time around in Firefox: The whole problem worked itself through inside of a minute. I was able to use the opened web pages again, the mouse was working, etc. I don't know what all this means, but I might end up switching to FF if it will work through freezes more quickly, even though it is stupid that in today's day and age, I have to expect my *new-ish* computer to freeze every single time I go to upload an image to common sites.

Oh, and the actual selection of the image and subsequent upload did not freeze my computer at all. in fact, I just tried it again (both with and without refreshing the page), and I was able to go start to finish with no issue!

So I don't know why it happened the first time but not subsequent times in FF. I'll try it on the other sites that froze my computer and see how it does. If nothing else, I can at least use FF for this specific task and reserve Chrome for other things (like Google's stupid programming that makes only Chrome display Drive documents properly).

I also just realized that this is all a little off-topic. None of this in particular really answers my OP.