Fix System and Compressed Memory 100% Disk Usage

System and compressed memory is a feature in Windows 10 that is responsible for memory and RAM compression. This helps in RAM optimization and ideally, System and Compressed Memory should only consume a minuscule amount of CPU and RAM.

However, due to some causes that we shall later mention in this guide, it ends up gobbling huge amounts of RAM and CPU of up to 100%. This high memory usage of System and Compressed Memory significantly slows down your PC and creates a host of other problems.  Eventually, this leads to the freezing of your applications or the ultimate crashing of your system

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Causes of System and Compressed Memory 100% Disk Usage

Many causes abound which lead to this problem, but 4 of the major culprits that may lead to System and compressed memory consuming 100% disk space are:

  1. Incorrect virtual memory tweaks
  2. Changing the size of the Paging file from Automatic to an Erroneous value
  3. Malware infection
  4. Corrupted system files

Solutions for System and Compressed Memory 100% Disk Usage

To address this problem, we are going to outline tried and tested solutions that have proven to be very effective in alleviating this issue. Follow along as we take you through a step-by-step procedure for each remedy.

Solution 1: Disable Superfetch

Superfetch is a caching service in Windows designed to speed up booting process, enhance faster loading of applications and speed up your system.

 However, it has been identified as a notorious culprit in the degradation of PC’s performance by exerting a lot of pressure on CPU and RAM in Windows 8 and later versions. For this reason, disabling superfetch drastically lowers the RAM and CPU utilization.

Superfetch can be turned off using 2 ways:

Method 1: Disable superfetch on  Windows Services

Press Windows Key + R

In the Run dialogue, type services.msc

 Run Windows services

Click ‘OK’ or  hit the  ENTER key

This opens a Windows services window. Scroll down and right-click on ‘superfetch’ and select the  ‘stop’ option to turn off or disable Superfetch .

Stop SysMain service on Windows Services

Note:  After the Windows May 2019 update, superfetch was renamed to SysMain.  So SysMain takes the place of Superfetch in ‘Windows services’ after the May 2019 update.


Method 2: Disable superfetch on Command Prompt

Click on the Windows search bar, and type command prompt.

command prompt option in taskbar

On the pull-up menu, right-click on command prompt option and select ‘Run as administrator’.

run cmd as administrator

Next, run the command net.exe stop Superfetch.

NOTE: Again, as stated earlier, superfetch has been renamed to SysMain after the May 2019 Windows update. If you have applied the May 2019 update, then run net.exe stop SysMain and hit Enter on your keyboard.

Stop SysMain service in Windows 10

Hold for a few minutes and see if there will be any improvement in the system’s performance. In the same vein, you can run check disk by executing the command chkdsk.exe /f /r and hitting the Enter key on your keyboard. Next,  type Y to confirm the disk check.

If disabling superfetch didn’t work out for you. Try the next solution.

  30 Common Windows 10 Annoyances and their Fixes

Solution 2: Temporarily Disable System and Compressed Memory

In response to the high disk utilization, you can temporarily stop or disable the System and Compressed Memory process. To achieve this, follow the steps below:

In the windows search bar type ‘Control Panel’.

In the pull-up menu that appears, click on the ‘Control Panel‘ option.

Control Panel option

Next click on the ‘System and Security‘ option. In the next window, scroll down and click on the ‘Administrative Tools‘ option.

Administrative tools

In the next windows,  double-click on ‘Task scheduler’ option. This opens a task scheduler Window.

task scheduler

In the left pane, double-click on the ‘Task scheduler Library’ option to expand the list up to ‘Microsoft‘ option.

Next, double-click on the ‘Microsoft‘ option to expand and double-click on the ‘windows‘ option to further expand it.

 

Task scheduler Microsoft Windows

 

Scroll down and double-click on the ‘MemoryDiagnostic‘ option.

Task scheduler Microsoft Windows

On the right pane, right-click on ‘RunFullMemoryDiagnosticEntry‘ task and select the ‘Disable‘ option.

Disable RunFullMemoryDiagnostic

Finally, close the Task scheduler Window and restart your PC.


Recommended ways to avert System and Compressed Memory High Disk Usage

To steer clear of this menace a few simple tricks come in handy. These include:

Adding RAM – Since this problem adversely affects the RAM is it prudent to scale up your RAM to prevent overutilization.

Updating drivers – Additionally, consider updating all system drivers to avoid running into this scenario.

Closing idle applications or tabs you don’t require – I unnecessary applications and web pages that are not currently in use only hog your RAM and drastically slow down your system. Simply close them to reduce the load they exert on RAM.

Wrapping up

That’s all we had for today. in this guide, we outlined the causes of Systems and compressed memory high disk usage, causes, remedies and tips you can use to avoid running into this sticky situation. We hope this guide provided insight and equipped you with the requisite knowledge in solving this problem.

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