KVR Audio

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:24 pm

Anybody else on Windows 10 notice WaasMedic Agent.exe running and causing excessive drive usage since early this year ?

Waasmedic is a "Windows Update component that is run in the background for the purpose of repairing Windows Update should it get damaged or corrupted".

I'm having the issue on all five Win 10 systems I have. Four have been updated to 20H2 and my studio system still runs 2004. Yesterday all systems had waasmedic running after boot up and on my studio system which is an i7 8700K it ran for almost 10 minutes reporting 100% disk usage. It is a repeating task in the Task Scheduler.

I can see the drive light on my studio system so I always monitor activity since I'd rather not have Win 10 grinding away at my hard drive while I'm trying to make music.

The waasmedic issue started early this year and the general consensus is that a wonky update in that time period has caused the issue.

One person reported yesterday that "For the last week WaasMedic Agent has been reducing my PC to a crawl. I've checked updates, as suggested, it says I am up to date. Why is there no response from Microsoft concerning this problem?". Indeed M$ has been of no help up to this point.

So if you're noticing high disk usage check and see if waasmedic is the culprit. You can shut it down from within the Task Manger but it just comes back. It's trying to fix something but no one can say for sure just what least of all M$.....

EDIT: The task was scheduled to run yesterday on the 4th and again on the 11th and every seven days after that so check on those days. You can see it in Task Scheduler. I don't think the issue is that waasmedic is running it's the fact that it's running for so long and at such a high disk usage since January.

Pictus · Post by **Pictus** » Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:57 pm

Try https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/289 ... -10-a.html

I did not tested, but found this https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-upd ... t-page-28/

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Tue Apr 06, 2021 1:22 am

Thanks but this is not a system issue it's a Win 10 issue. It happens on all 5 of my Win 10 systems and quite a few people are reporting the same issue at the Microsoft answers forum.

WaasMedic Agent has been scheduled by M$ to run once a week for quite some time but it's only since the beginning of the year that the issue with long run times and high disk usage has been reported. Something went wonky with updates during that time period as I never noticed waasmedic running before that time and I do monitor disk activity especially on the studio system.

It makes my laptop almost unusable while waasmedic is running but then it's an older i3. Even on my i7 8700K studio system it will run for around 10 minutes at 100% disk usage.

I tried disabling the task from within Task Scheduler but even an Admin account does not have sufficient privilege. You can of course just stop the process from within the Task Manager but it only comes back.

The next scheduled run is April 11th so you can check then. I'm going to manually shut it down on a couple of systems and see if it runs again on the 12th. If so then it's pointless to shut it down.

M$ is aware of the issue but to this point have not been of any help. I'm going to try installing KB 5000842 on a couple of systems to see if that addresses the issue but I have serious doubts.

Here's a sample of one of the reports from other people.....

Win 10 040521.png

Pictus · Post by **Pictus** » Tue Apr 06, 2021 4:23 am

Microsoft created *MANY* redundant services/tasks to make sure
Windows Update runs...
WaaSMedic is one of them...
To only disable WaaSMedic in registry is not enough because another redundant
task/service will enable it back, you either disable the whole family of services/tasks
by hand or by a script.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows- ... ic-service
I tested the script and it is OK, but if the script "forgot" to disable any other
Microssoft countermeasure, WaaSMedic will be enabled again!
I did some other tests and WaaSMedic and Windows Update still disabled, lets
hope stays this way...

IF not, BOOT from a USB Bootable Pendrive
Go to C:\Windows\System32\
Rename WaaSMedicAgent.exe to something else like WaaSMedicAgent.exe.1

legendCNCD · Post by **legendCNCD** » Tue Apr 06, 2021 12:45 pm

Sledgehammer script can disable and enable ALL WUpdate stuff with a click of a mouse. Update when you want, not when they want you to.

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:48 am

Yea those are band-aid solutions. Not interested in those. Microsoft are aware of the recent waasmedic issues that began earlier this year and reported by many users other than myself:

MS 040621-1.png

MS 040621-2.png

Anyway the original question was is anyone else noticing high disk usage with waasmedic recently. You can check when it's scheduled to run again on April 11th.

EDIT: April 11th.

The WaasMedic Agent scheduled run had mixed results here. On this system it only ran for a minute or so and this system is more bloated with all manner of programs and betas and demos and freeware than all my other systems combined.

However on my studio computer which is an i7 8700K with only 4 DAWs and a bunch of plugins installed, no third party security software or browsers only Edge and Defender WaasMedic ran for 11 minutes and 45 seconds at up to 8.8 megabytes per second. All told it was 12:30 of 100% Disk Activity as reported by the Task Manager.

Let's say Waas only averaged 2 megabytes per second. That's over 1.3 gigs of disk activity and for what ? What is it doing other than wearing out the hard drive ? I pay attention to what is happening to my systems. Perhaps others don't and just trust Microsoft. WaasMedic is scheduled by M$ to run every seven days so every week I have to look forward to "Waasday" now. You can check in the Task Scheduler/Microsoft/Windows/WaaSMedic.

So if anyone is having issues with high disk usage check to see if WaasMedic is the culprit. It's scheduled by M$ to run again on the 18th of April. M$ has at least acknowledged the issue so who knows maybe Patch Tuesday will bring some relief.

legendCNCD · Post by **legendCNCD** » Wed Sep 01, 2021 9:01 am

Last time what I did on my win10 laptop was:
- open admin level command prompt
- write "explorer ." to open admin explorer in system32
- took away rights from trustedinstaller and system from waasmedic, usosvc, wuauclt etc. files and put the rights to meself.

Now System cannot run them. Ahhahahaha.. oh man. Then I deleted all the scheduled tasks from USO, WaasMedic and WinUpdate.

No more 100% CPU usage, no more updates randomly.

Of course the machine has been locked with Sledgehammer but that UsoCoreWorker starting took 100% CPU again sometimes so I lost my temper and did that radical move.

Note my laptop is Pentium N4200 1,1GHz

so it really made the machine crawl when update mechanisms launched. Hated it. Now its under control *lol* - but if I want to update, I'll have to reverse those by hand. I wont, I'll just install new version on top from scratch later on, then use Sledgehammer on that too.