PC building is all about picking the parts that suit you. Usually, that means spending a large sum of money on components like the CPU, GPU, and storage, as they are directly responsible for how fast or slow your workloads will run. So, facing stutters in games is probably the worst feeling you can have if you’re rocking that high-end PC that you’ve always wanted to build. What’s worse, sometimes the stuttering is caused by factors that simply aren’t that evident.

Background indexing

A potential performance killer

Background indexing refers to the processes that maintain searchable and synchronized metadata about the files stored on your drive(s). The process is used by services like Windows Search, cloud-sync clients like OneDrive, and common game launchers like Steam. It’s designed to keep track of the files being created, modified, renamed, or deleted — and for making searches snappy. On Windows, for example, the NTFS File Change Journal keeps track of file-change notifications. The Windows Search Indexing Service then updates its index with the changes.

The files in your PC that are frequently modified need to be re-indexed constantly, but only do so if the folder or drive they’re in is part of Windows Search’s indexed locations. These can include game installation directories, which contain tens of thousands of files, including shader cache files, configuration and log files, DLC/patch fragments, etc. Such files are often modified, especially on booting, patch downloads, and GPU driver updates. If the drive or folder where you have your games installed happens to have indexing enabled, you’ll have multiple processes competing for bandwidth, and this can cause stuttering.

These cases can occur if you modify the default save locations, move a library folder (Documents, Videos, Pictures, etc.) to another drive, or enable features like OneDrive’s “Backup known folders,” all of which cause the new folder locations (and sometimes the entire destination drive) to become indexed. In these cases, Windows Search begins tracking file changes in those directories, which can include game files that update frequently, download content dynamically, or generate shader caches.

With modern game engines (like Unreal Engine 5), streaming assets (textures, shaders, geometry, etc.) dynamically during gameplay, indexing and other background tasks can introduce latency in accessing the disk and streaming assets. This is represented in the form of microstutters, frame time spikes, and longer loading times.

Some suffer more than others

Slower storage bears the brunt

Slower drives (namely, SATA SSDs and HDDs) can struggle while simultaneously indexing and running modern, graphically intensive titles. This is because they have lower maximum queue depth and higher latency, and may not have enough bandwidth to handle indexing, background processes, and the game you’re running — all at the same time. So, with a single, slower drive having Windows and all other data (even if they are separated by partitioning), you’re much more likely to see slowdowns than compared to that on an NVMe drive. This is especially likely during scenarios such as gaming while another game updates, or while downloading files.

Also, though indexing is assigned to low-priority threads, dual-core and low-power laptop CPUs can still be affected by it, running concurrently with background tasks as they compete with the game thread scheduler. Games that are more CPU-intensive are also more sensitive.

How to determine if background indexing is the problem

...and how to fix it

If your games are stuttering, open the Processes tab in the Task Manager. You’ll want to look for the following processes:

• SearchIndex34.exe, SearchFilterHost.exe, or SearchProtocolHost (Windows Search Index)
• OneDrive.exe
• SteamService.exe or steam.exe
• EpicWebHelper.exe (Epic Games Launcher)
• MsMpEng.exe (Windows Defender Realtime Protection)

On hard drives and SSDs, even a small percentage of utilization from these tasks can cause stuttering due to increased latency. If or when your game stutters, alt-tab immediately and check the disk utilization. If you see higher than usual utilization by any of these processes, they are likely causing the stutter.

Once you confirm that indexing or background processes are causing the problem, the most effective approach is to reduce the number of workloads hitting the same storage device. The best way is to move your game library to a different drive than the OS if possible. This physically separates game read/write operations from search indexing, updates, and antivirus scans. If moving the library isn’t an option, you can just disable indexing only for your game folders or game drive. Replacing the drive with an NVMe SSD can also work; they have a much higher queue depth and are better at handling multiple processes at once.

Lastly, you can schedule or temporarily pause background services like Windows Defender Full Scan or launcher auto-updates to avoid them overlapping with your gameplay sessions.

If you can’t figure out why your games are struggling, look to your storage

Indexing can be a real concern if you’re not running your Windows and games on separate drives and if your only drive is a SATA SSD or hard drive. So, if this scenario sounds familiar and your games are stuttering, try diagnosing for indexing and I/O contention before blaming your storage for being too slow, or your GPU for not having enough VRAM.