Something related to Outlook generates high disk activity

Lt. Columbo 311

Hi guys,

The issue is happening on a terminal server Windows Server 2016.
Users' emails are hosted in Business Google Workspace.
Users' Outlook profiles are created with Google Workspace Sync.
Over the last months users complain that the server is slow in around 2-3 hours after working day start.
Server restart helps for few hours and then performance degrades again.
Below is the screenshot of Resource Monitor's Disk tab.

If anyone ever faced with something similar please advise what might generate PID 4 (on the screenshot) high disk activity.

Yuki Sun-MSFT 40,856 Reputation points

2021-10-11T06:43:45.75+00:00

Hi @Lt. Columbo ,

As per your concern about PID 4, I‘ve tried searching around but hardly find information explictly expaining how it interacts with the Outlook client.

But noticed from the screenshot that these activities are all points to the olk***.tmp files located at the %temp% folder, and based on what I've read, these files could be generated by some third-party add-ins and are normally deleted automatically when existing Outlook or when Outlook no longer uses it.

Over the last months users complain that the server is slow in around 2-3 hours after working day start.

By this, do you mean it had been working fine for a while until months ago? If so, any changes which might impact Outlook were made right before the issue started? For instance, any add-in or software was implemented on the machine at that time?
Have you tried monitoring the file size of the %temp% folder mentioned and see if it increases rapidly before the slow performance issue occurs and returns to normal after a reboot?

Furthermore, in case to help eliminate whether the issue is due to any third-party add-ins, it's suggested to try running Outlook in safe mode for several hours to check the result.

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Yuki Sun-MSFT 40,856 Reputation points

2021-10-21T00:30:26.637+00:00

Hi @Lt. Columbo ,

Just checked in to see how thing are going on with this issue. Should there's any additional findings, feel free to post back.

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1 answer

Lt. Columbo 311 Reputation points

2021-10-13T06:17:55.657+00:00

Hi @Yuki Sun-MSFT ,

I created new profile and set up manually without using Google Workspace for Outlook and this new Outlook profile stopped generating high disk activity.
Interestingly, I set up the same Google accounts on another server but with Outlook 365 and I can't see PID 4 generated by some Outlook processes.
Nothing has changed (at least to my knowledge) since it was working fine.
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Yuki Sun-MSFT 40,856 Reputation points

2021-10-14T09:16:04.63+00:00

Hi @Lt. Columbo ,

Interestingly, I set up the same Google accounts on another server but with Outlook 365 and I can't see PID 4 generated by some Outlook processes.

What's the version of Outlook on the problematic server? And is there any other difference between the configuration of the Google accounts?

By the way, is Google sync app used on the server? I tried searching further and found the thread below which discussed a issue that google account in Outlook cause high CPU usage. Although it's different from the high disk activity in your situation, I assume it's worth giving it a shot if you are also using the Google sync app:
Surface 4 Pro - Open Outlook cause high CPU usage (GMAIL account)
"if you use Google Sync to your outlook. You must disable your note sync because it cause high CPU usage. "

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