Constant freezing due to 100% load on SSD with nothing showing in Taskmanager

[GM1980]

Hello Community,

I have been using Avast for years, however, in the last few months I had lots of trouble with my computer freezing. Mostly this phenomenon occurs about once or twice a month. It’s several seconds up to several minutes (the longest freeze was 7 minutes). After it is done it usually takes about a minute, sometimes just 5 seconds until everything repeats and I have to wait again. All of this happens because my SSD is pinned a 100% disk usage. Up until now the problem fixed itself after a restart, however, this is not the case this time.

During this period, I cannot click anything, because some service that is not showing up in Task manager is killing all other running services and programs.

Resource monitor also shows nothing, but immediately after the Computer recovers it shows a few Avast services that used a lot of bandwidth. Some of them lead to “C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast” and write some .dat files there. Others lead to the Avast.exe or other Avast Services.

Task manager shows Avast Antivirus, Avast Antivirus remediation.exe, Avast Antivirus Service, Avast Behavior Shield and Avast Free Antivirus as running. However, during the freeze none of these have any Disk activity, since the task that freezes everything is not visible in Task manager.

It shows just 100% Usage with no shown process actually using anything (pretty much like this
https://www.drivethelife.com/uploadfiles/20160907/disk-usage-in-task-manager-has-been-in-100.png
). I myself couldn’t take any screenshots during that time which is why I am using a 3rd party image.

I have the latest version (19.8.2393 (Build 19.8.4257.552)) installed and tried to repair the installation already, still no change. My Laptop is a HP EliteBook G3 with Win10 Pro 1909.

So, while I was writing this the PC froze about 20 times. It took me more than an hour to complete this post because of the constant freezing.

After about 3 hours that this issue persisted it finally stopped. However, I still hope you can help me fix this so it won’t happen again in the future. It is really frustrating trying to work while this is happening.

Thanks a lot in advance!

[Asyn]

• Which Avast…? (Free/Pro/IS/Premium)
• Other security related software installed…?
• Which AV(s) did you use before Avast…?

[Asyn]

Update to the latest version (20.1.2397): https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=232420.0

[Cluster-Lizard2014]

If this persists: have you tried using Process Hacker 2?

That has a very useful GUI feature in that if you immediately hover over its tray usage graph icon it shows you the top 15 processes being used and in a much clearer way than MS task manager does.

I’ve used that to identify in the past what was running a few minutes after first booting my PC and taking over 90% CPU use for about a minute.

It turned out to be a MS ‘telemetry’ gathering scheduled task they had sneaked onto my system. That happened again later and Process Hacker 2 pointed me at the culprit which, again, was the same thing.

I do not think this will be anything like that but it might help you identify what process is causing your problem.

[GM1980]

@Asyn post:2

• Which Avast…? (Free/Pro/IS/Premium)
• Other security related software installed…?
• Which AV(s) did you use before Avast…?

Hello Asyn, thanks for your help!

• I have the Free version installed.
• Except for the preinstalled but not active Windows defender I do not have any other AV installed.
• Avast is also my first and only AV i ever had on this machine

I will try to install the latest version as suggested, thanks a lot!

@Cluster-Lizard2014 post:4

If this persists: have you tried using Process Hacker 2?

That has a very useful GUI feature in that if you immediately hover over its tray usage graph icon it shows you the top 15 processes being used and in a much clearer way than MS task manager does.

I’ve used that to identify in the past what was running a few minutes after first booting my PC and taking over 90% CPU use for about a minute.

It turned out to be a MS ‘telemetry’ gathering scheduled task they had sneaked onto my system. That happened again later and Process Hacker 2 pointed me at the culprit which, again, was the same thing.

I do not think this will be anything like that but it might help you identify what process is causing your problem.

Hello Cluster-Lizard2014, thanks for your help!

I will try this as well, I did not know about this program and I will give it a shot! Thanks a lot!

[Asyn]

You’re welcome.

[bob3160]

Almost sounds like a Widows update going on in the background.

[GM1980]

Hello again,

@Cluster-Lizard2014 post:4

If this persists: have you tried using Process Hacker 2?

That has a very useful GUI feature in that if you immediately hover over its tray usage graph icon it shows you the top 15 processes being used and in a much clearer way than MS task manager does.

I’ve used that to identify in the past what was running a few minutes after first booting my PC and taking over 90% CPU use for about a minute.

It turned out to be a MS ‘telemetry’ gathering scheduled task they had sneaked onto my system. That happened again later and Process Hacker 2 pointed me at the culprit which, again, was the same thing.

I do not think this will be anything like that but it might help you identify what process is causing your problem.

so i tried the method with Process Hacker and it shows nothing. The only thing I could discover that might be helpful is that everytime the disk usage ramps up to 100% more and more processes are removed from the list as they have 0B/s usage.

the last ones are the C:$LogFile and some Avast processes. As soon as nothing is in the list the Disk usage drops back to normal and I can use the system again.

So whatever task is running in the background cannot be picked up by either Task Manager nor Process Hacker and its goal is to stop everything from accessing the disk for a split second. Still no idea what it could be.

Hope you guys have an idea. Thanks in advance

Kind Regards

[bob3160]

I’ve reported this to Avast. Let’s see if that helps.

[kwiq]

Hi GM1980,
we would need to capture an xperf trace. Xperf is microsofts tool so it can be downloaded from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install

After installation run cmd line as admin and test how to measure cpu and disk :

Command to start xperf log measurement:
xperf.exe" -on DiagEasy+DISPATCHER+Profile -stackwalk profile+CSwitch+ReadyThread -start user -on 72AA3505-D4D6-4527-A088-92534DA1082C

wait for a while to capture cpu and disk usage …

Command to stop xperf log measurement :
xperf.exe" -stop user -stop -d _xperf_merged.etl

When you will experience the issue again run these two commands and capture xperf log. Compress the _xperf_merged.etl as GM1980_4_2020.zip and upload it to avast ftp . More detailed description how to upload a file is here https://support.avast.com/en-eu/article/FTP-file-upload

Have a nice day !

[fsmith_16]

FWIW, I’ve started having this problem in the last week. Spent several days updating drivers, replacing video cards, running windows repair tools, full disk scans, etc. No improvement.

Can’t say it’s a problem with Avast, but it’s my current suspect.

[bob3160]

@fsmith_16 post:11

FWIW, I’ve started having this problem in the last week. Spent several days updating drivers, replacing video cards, running windows repair tools, full disk scans, etc. No improvement.

Can’t say it’s a problem with Avast, but it’s my current suspect.

Follow the direction already posted by Avast if you’re interested in solving the problem.
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=232416.msg1544123#msg1544123

[GM1980]

@bob3160 post:9

I’ve reported this to Avast. Let’s see if that helps.

Hi bob3160,
thanks for your help! I hope I can give some further information when it happens again. Have a nice day!

@kwiq post:10

Hi GM1980,
we would need to capture an xperf trace. Xperf is microsofts tool so it can be downloaded from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install

After installation run cmd line as admin and test how to measure cpu and disk :

Command to start xperf log measurement:
xperf.exe" -on DiagEasy+DISPATCHER+Profile -stackwalk profile+CSwitch+ReadyThread -start user -on 72AA3505-D4D6-4527-A088-92534DA1082C

wait for a while to capture cpu and disk usage …

Command to stop xperf log measurement :
xperf.exe" -stop user -stop -d _xperf_merged.etl

When you will experience the issue again run these two commands and capture xperf log. Compress the _xperf_merged.etl as GM1980_4_2020.zip and upload it to avast ftp . More detailed description how to upload a file is here https://support.avast.com/en-eu/article/FTP-file-upload

Have a nice day !

Hi kwiq,

thanks for the suggestion, I’ll try this and upload the file as soon as it happens again. So far I have not encountered this problem since the last time I have posted. Lets hope it stays that way.

Have a nice day!

@fsmith_16 post:11

FWIW, I’ve started having this problem in the last week. Spent several days updating drivers, replacing video cards, running windows repair tools, full disk scans, etc. No improvement.

Can’t say it’s a problem with Avast, but it’s my current suspect.

Hi fsmith_16,
I’ll keep you updated if I find a solution. Have a nice day!