So I was playing a game this evening. But then it started lagging. I decreased graphics quality from "high" to "med", from "med" to "low" - it didn't become much better - maybe even worse. I set game on pause and fired up task manager - it showed 100% CPU usage and 100% disk usage. I waited a few minutes with game on pause - numbers didn't change. I would assume that whatever game needs to load (like textures for a next level) - being paused, it should eventually load them and stop the disk activity?
I fired up performance monitor to see what's going on. And looking at processes and files with highest disk activity, I realised what day of the month is it! It's 2nd Tuesday of the month - the day when, instead of playing games, you're supposed to be updating Windows. Too bad that that specific game didn't have a version for the more update-friendly OS.
Dear developers, please consider porting your games to the more update-resilient OS - otherwise, they are virtually unplayable on 2nd Tuesday of every month!
Also, thanks Microsoft for having the "pause updates" button. Greatly appreciated.