~solved~ wsappx using 100% disk all the time

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Brandon893

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Okay please help. I've had success asking this community before when I was desperate, so I'll try again. I Just bought an ASUS gaming laptop that had Windows 8.1. I had high disk usage with windows 8 so without really trying to dig into the problem I thought upgrading to Windows 10 would fix it. Well, I was wrong. So I started digging and looking online then listened to other threads telling me to look on my resource monitor which helped me see it's svchost(wsappx) constantly using the disk up to 100%. Trying pretty much everything, I've found it it's virtually impossible to disable or delete wsappx and it's components. finding out it has to do with the Windows store, I really want it gone because I have no care for the store and it's making this laptop close to useless. I have two screenshots. But I don't know how to attach them.

UPDATE
trying out a lot of fixes over the internet like disabling superfetch, BITS, antivirus and more seem to somewhat reduce it, but any program I open causes it to rocket up to 100% disk usage. Like file explorer, chrome, skype, or steam. After trying out a fix that used regedit to create a run command for the store to not open, that seemed to fix wsappx opening for while before it randomly opened right back up. I was wondering if it was just this drive going bad even though I just got the computer about a week ago. I can change the hard drive myself but I didn't know if I'd lose my three year protection warranty from best buy if I opened the laptop up.
 
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Boogieman_WD
No worries about the post, mate.

So this really sounds like it might be caused by a virus or malware even if you were unable to detect anything. Perhaps you could try downloading an anti-malware program specifically and see what you find out with it.
On the other hand if you're set for a clean/fresh install (which is definitely a good thing having in mind your case). You should have no issues removing everything from the drive and wiping it clean. If you're worried that there might be something left after you format it, you can use a low level format (a.k.a. Write Zeros). This type of format writes a 0 or a "blank" if you will, on each individual sector of your drive (which means that the larger the HDD is, the longer it will take)...
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Hey there, Brandon.

You could try out this option as well: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-performance/100-disk-usage/c78e2dae-9475-4abc-96e1-508cda400056?db=5. Although since disabling superfetch, BITS, Windows Search, etc. didn't help at all perhaps you can jump directly to this one: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/windows-8-keeps-slows-down-to-100-disk-usage-and/cd787f8d-e7b4-4872-aecb-6f0cd15ad942?page=1&tm=1380334962208.
It sounds like it's not a problem related to the drive at all, but if you worry about that, you could download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool (or a 3rd party diagnostic tool if the manufacturer doesn't offer one) and test the drive.

Ultimately if nothing seems to be working, I'd advise you to get in touch with Microsoft's customer support, to see if they can help with that.

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
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Brandon893

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Okay well I've accidentally clicked best answer on that. Now I can't undo it so that sucks. But anyways, I won't be able to try any of those fixes until after work but I will for sure try them so thanks.I thought it was the drive because I've read other threads where people simply CANNOT fix it and others have said it maybe has to do with a failing drives read/write speed not being up to standards any more or something in relation to that.
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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No worries, mate. I have unselected it.

It's nor very likely, but it is possible. If this is the case, perhaps it would be best if you'd backup any important data which you might have on that drive, just to be on the safe side and then run some tests.

Keep me posted and I'll be sure to respond as soon as I check the results. :)
 
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Brandon893

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After reading the second thread you linked, it sounds like I may have a similar problem as one of the people who answered saying his ASUS Wi-Fi drivers and old ASUS program drivers needed to be updated to windows 8/10. This being an ASUS laptop, I have all the old pre installed drivers too. That and another solution was increasing some setting to be equivalent with my ram size. If it helps any, here's my specs.
Intel i7 4720hq
NVIDIA GTX 965m
8GB ram
Toshiba mq01abd100 hard drive
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Well it's worth the try. Check for updates of all your drivers either by going to the laptop manufacturer's website and searching for the ones for your laptop model, or by searching for each individual component on their respective websites. I know that the second option is a lot more tedious than the first, but sometimes laptop manufacturer's take some more time to list the newest versions of the drivers that come out all the time for all the different parts, so you might find newer versions on the particular component's website.

If it's a driver issue you might want to consult wit the laptop manufacturer's customer support instead of Microsoft, to see if they can point you in the right direction.

Please keep me updated on your progress.
 
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Brandon893

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Last night when I got home ready to attempt to fix the laptop I might have found something I wasn't expecting when in all honesty I was dumb for that not being my first assumption when I found these issues. I've seen programs on that computer that I would assume don't come with it, like skype, xsplit broadcaster and a few other applications I can't exactly remember right now. But silly me let them slip not really thinking about it. This laptop was an open box at best buy for 999$ original price was 1375$. It was still wrapped in plastic and when started up had the normal first time procedure of starting windows so I assumed it has already been wiped from the store before attempting to sell. But apparently not. I've seen skype, google chrome and cortana open randomly at times during startup even when I've had startup disabled for skype. But for the first time last night, chrome opened with a pre-typed out search on Bing of sexual acts (not getting into specifics) resulting in images and website links to pornographic websites. So immediately I thought, crap this stupid thing has a virus. So closing chrome I opened my up to date trend micro antivirus+ and did a full scan with no results. Turning that off, I installed avast and did a full scan with no results too. So uninstalling things I had no idea what they are, I did research on a few of the things causing the 100% disk usage which was mainly "system and compressed memory" also "system", "svhost" and "conhost.exe". Among the research I found that conhost.exe could possibly be the Trojan sending information to another system and/or using Wi-Fi/disk to download malicious files. Also read that dwm.exe and one other Microsoft named program I can't remember, are also apart of the Trojan which I found all three programs running. But I read that if found in file location of system32, they're normal legit programs. Which is where I found them located. I also found a program named umonit64.exe that was possibly a virus. But all these things I found weren't obvious to me whether or not they're threats since I'm still new to the virus type stuff. I tried my best to find out exactly what it was, but everything seemed to check out for me which made no sense as to why chrome and other apps open on their own specially chromes pre-typed Bing search. So I figured the easiest most stress free way for me to fix this issue, was to wipe the hard drive entirely and re-install Windows. But doing some research I read that some viruses can somehow still reside in the drive even after the wipe which is very rare. So my plan of action is to today after work, I'll be stopping by Wal-Mart to hopefully buy a Samsung ssd to install Windows on then take out the old hard drive in hopes I can completely delete everything on it some other way.
I'm also hoping that getting a new drive especially an ssd, would fix my disk usage crap that may or may not be the Trojan. Any advice would be well apreciated. Also, sorry for this very long post.
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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No worries about the post, mate.

So this really sounds like it might be caused by a virus or malware even if you were unable to detect anything. Perhaps you could try downloading an anti-malware program specifically and see what you find out with it.
On the other hand if you're set for a clean/fresh install (which is definitely a good thing having in mind your case). You should have no issues removing everything from the drive and wiping it clean. If you're worried that there might be something left after you format it, you can use a low level format (a.k.a. Write Zeros). This type of format writes a 0 or a "blank" if you will, on each individual sector of your drive (which means that the larger the HDD is, the longer it will take). After that even data recovery companies won't be able to recover any data. The idea is that this basically wipes out everything. So you could do that by connecting this drive to a different computer and running a low level format, either via DISKPART, or by downloading an HDD diagnostic tool (most of them have that option) and formatting the drive this way.
Here's the DISKPART option:
1. Open CMD (Command Prompt) as administrator
2. Type diskpart and press "enter"
3. Type list disk and press "enter", you should see all the drives connected to the computer
4. You can find out which drive you need to format by its size. Once you're sure which one is yours type select disk X and press "enter" (where "X" is the number of the disk you wish to format, so don't forget to change it - e.g. "select disk 1")
5. You should get a message that the disk is selected. Type "clean all" and press "enter". All that's left after that is to wait for the process to finish. You should see a message like "diskpart succeeded in cleaning the disk".

As I've already mentioned this could take hours, depending on the drive's size. Once the drive has been low level formatted, you should initialize it. Here's how to do it: How to initialize or write a signature to a secondary hard drive or Solid State drive in Windows.

Once you're done with that, your drive should be ready. Go ahead and connect it to your computer and make a fresh install of Windows. On the other hand, if you decide to go with the SSD, you could still perform a low level format on the HDD and initialize and partition the drive afterwords as you see fit, so that you can use it as a secondary storage drive.

Note that in order to avoid possible issues with your OS in the future, I'd recommend that you have only the drive you're installing Windows to connected to the motherboard during the installation process.

Please let me know if you have any questions whatsoever.
Good luck!
 
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Brandon893

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Well the drive on there now is 1TB. But barely 100gbs have been used so do you think it'll still take a while? Also I do plan on installing Windows on the ssd so how would I go about doing that if I were to take out the drive that's in there now without somehow transfering the virus over?
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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It will take a lot of time probably a couple of hours for a 1TB drive. It doesn't matter how full it is as it wipes each sector of the drive no matter if there's data on it or not.

Hopefully it doesn't turn out to be a virus, but just in case it is - just disconnect the HDD, connect the SSD, install Windows, install an anti-malware and an anti-virus programs and update their databases. After that connect the HDD and without accessing it, just go ahead and follow the DISKPART steps to wipe it clean, if you don't have important data on it.
 
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Brandon893

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Thanks for the advice. One more question, being an open box model laptop, I didn't get an installation disk for drivers such as Wi-Fi or graphics. Will I have issues with my display and Wi-Fi without that disk to install things? I may have a disk for another motherboard I got in my desktop but I wasn't sure if that would be good to use on a separate computer.
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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The drivers you have from a different computer won't do the job. But don't worry, it's as easy as going to the laptop manufacturer's website and downloading all the drivers you need for your model. The only problem that I can think of is that you'd have to use a different computer to download at least the driver for your wireless adapter. After you install it on your laptop you can then download the rest of the drivers directly with it, once you're able to connect to your Wi-Fi network.
But as I said, all laptop manufacturer's have a section in their websites for downloading drivers. Usually you specify the model from a drop down menu and specify the OS as well and you get the drivers necessary for that laptop model and version of Windows.

Let me know how it goes.
 
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Brandon893

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Started the "clean all" action last night and it finished by the morning. So now this computer is lightning fast and virus free! Just to make sure I'm running malwarebytes and trend micro to scan and see if it's clean. But all seems to be good now. Thanks for the help man! No more 100% disk usage that I can see right now.
 
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