VN7-792G develops 100% disk activity, with no read/writes, on HDD

Hi, everyone.

I bought this V Nitro Black last Monday (26 December) simply because it was the last 17" gaming laptop left in the store. I've bought Acer before, and overall my experiences haven't been too bad.

I got it home, did Windows updates, and started installing World of Warcraft. After a while, I noticed that the download process had stalled. Tried restarting the Battle.net client, still stalled. I checked the disk activity in the Task Manager, and saw that the HDD (the 'D' drive, as opposed to the SSD 'C' drive) was showing 100% activity, but with no read/write activity. I thought that was odd, and figured I'd try restarting. This is when I realised this is a bigger issue: the system would just hang at 'Restarting', so I had to hold down the power button to force a shutdown. Went through the process again, and the problem happened again.

Eventually I opened the Resource Monitor and checked the Disk section. While it was working, the files being written to the showed up, but soon the activity ramped up to 100%, and all read/writes were stopped.

The game /was/ eventually installed, but it took far longer to do so because of the problem, and having to force shutdown several times.

It seems that any time there's a lot of reading/writing going on, it just gives up. Can't even defragment the drive for more than a few minutes before it happens.

I have looked up the 100% disk activity problem with Google, and tried disabling Superfetch and Windows Search Indexing, with no luck. I've uninstalled McAfee's products to go back to the plain Windows Defender. I have tried a defrag in Safe Mode to test, and the problem shows up again. When doing a disk scan through Explorer, Windows says 'this drive is fine', but then says 'this drive has erorrs' if I click 'Scan'. This is in Safe Mode; it doesn't show errors at all when running regularly.

This is really quite an irritating issue; I don't know if it's the drive or Windows that's causing it. I've even contemplated doing a full format on the HDD to see if it's a dodgy format.

I'd like to avoid a call to tech support, so if someone here knows an answer for this, I'd be very appreciative. This is a problem that should not be present from almost the minute I get it home.

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Shenya

Did it already have version 1607 or has it just updated to it (anniversary update)?

I stopped it from installing on my laptop, since on my Acer desktop, this very issue occurred. It would just randomly freeze, the hd light would be full on. Sometimes it would unfreeze after a while sometimes not, sometimes it would freeze on restart, sometimes it would take 20 minutes before it would freeze. Sometimes during the freeze I could open task manager and see what you are describing, sometimes the entire thing would be frozen and force me to shut down.

According to what I read, this was supposedly an issue where people had an SSD and an HDD and had moved their Docs and settings etc to the HDD. This was not the case for me, the system had only an SSD and no movement of Docs etc had been done. Uninstalling the anniversary update fixed the issue.

Check which updates were installed after you got it home.

Sandwalker

I've just done a reset, and it seems that the base Windows version is already 1607. <.< Tried a defrag on the HDD, and after a couple minutes, read/write went to zero, disk activity went to 100%. I'm stumped. I don't really want to return the machine to the shop for a refund (if they'll give me one). I would have gone with another brand, but this Acer was the only one left with a 17" screen.

Edit: The Event Viewer shows that when the problem occurs, it generates an 'EventID 129: Reset to Device, \RaidPort0, was issued'. I turned up the following info on Microsoft's website:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3083595 'Task Manager might show 100% disk utilization on Windows 10 devices with Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) mode enabled'. I tried this, and it had no effect. I'm wondering if there's a specialised AHCI driver available, rather than Microsoft's generic driver.

The SSD has no issues, but the 2TB HDD really does not seem to play well. The fixes I'm seeing seem to assume only an SSD is present.

brummyfan2

Hi,

Give this a try, go to Settings, Systems, in Notifications and actions, switch off one by one while checking your disk usage, mainly switch off "Get tips,tricks and suggestions from windows".

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Sandwalker

I tried that too, and no effect. The problem seems to occur under a heavy disk access load, (such as defragmenting). After a minute or so of heavy load, the device reset error starts happening. This is not a good thing for games installed on the disk.

brummyfan2

Hi,

If you haven't tried system file checker, give it a try:https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2895-sfc-command-run-windows-10-a.html

Sandwalker

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations (as I'd expected).

I've tried looking around for device-specific drivers to replace the basic Windows one, with no luck.

I'm seriously considering trying to return the computer and get another that doesn't have a SSD+HDD combination if I'm going to have this bizarre, and frustrating, issue.