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It is basically not possible for me to unmount and disconnect my externall HDD because as soon as I plug it in, Windows Explorer uses massive disk usage (>100 MB/s) for about 10 minutes, and then the System process uses 20-40% CPU usage to do... something... and this persists until I shut down the computer and unplug the external HDD. I recently reinstalled Windows 11 because of this, to no avail. Any ideas how I might go about figuring out what the hell Windows 11 is doing with my external HDD? I caught it copy-pasting a huge file (>40 GB) from it to my Windows partition as a temp file (maximum storage of about 250 GB). Is anyone else experiencing this? For reference, my computer is a Dell Precision 5540.

EDIT 1

it looks like only drive C: has any idexing activity, but I rebuilt the index anyway. Twice, actually (reboots in between)

Does Windows 11 index directories not explicitly specified by you?

the 'System' process initializes this thread even when no drive is inserted now apparently, and it will last indefinitely, using between 15-30% CPU while it does... whatever it is that it is doing. I've let it go for 72 hrs several times.

EDIT 2

Excellent suggestion to use Sysinternals Process Explorer to probe the 'System' process. You can see that 'System' is not using disk I/O so much right now, but is using enough CPU to make my fans blow at max speed indefinitely.

Double-clicking on 'System' lets me see which thread is responsible for the high CPU, and its start address is ntoskrnl.exe!KeInitializeApc+0x4c0

Now the real fun begins. Any idea why ntoskrnl.exe might be using so much system resources indefinitely? It seems like other users have this problem with similar computer models. My fans are permanently on maximum speed 10-30 minutes after I turn the computer on because of this parasitic process.

cst_ramirez
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1 Answers1

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Windows both checks a drive for malware with Defender and indexes the drive if you let it. Since a large file is being generated, it's likely Search Indexer slowing down access.

  • Either let Search finish indexing, or

  • Press Windows, type indexing and select Indexing Options. In the Advanced dialog, remove the entire external drive, or select only specific locations and file types to index, to speed access.

    After a change, you might want to Rebuild the index, which will take some time, but just once.

You can also use Microsoft/Sysinternals Process Explorer for details on what processes are consuming resources. Try the following to get a better view:

  • Run Process Explorer as Administrator.
  • Add columns for Disk Read and Writes, and for I/O read and Writes, to see if those resources are a bottleneck, rather than CPU.
  • Click on a Process to view details, such as the myriad threads running under System. Note that not all threads might be active.

Process Explorer -- Threads

DrMoishe Pippik
  • 37,887