High CPU usage by System process

[Natox]

Hi, I have looked all over and seen somewhat related problems, but I couldn't find a solution that worked. Maybe I didn't look hard enough. I have a dual processor system, two AMD Opteron 244's, running Windows XP Professional with NUMA, because it has 3 Gb of RAM. One day I was looking at the task manager and suddenly noticed that the second CPU was maxed all the time. The process responsible for consuming about 50% of all CPU time (both CPU's together) was a process called "System." I understand that this groups a lot of things together, so I found some freeware called Process Explorer offered by Sysinternals. Process Explorer breaks the System process down into many other processes and creates two artificial processes called Deferred Procedure Calls and Hardware Interrupts out of the System process. It still shows about 50% of the System process's usage goes to the System process, 40% to Deferred Procedure Calls, and the other 10% to Hardware Interrupts. The program also shows that the thread taking up the most CPU usage for the System process has the start address ACPI.sys+0xfdbe. I have run Adaware and SpyBot, and they did not find anything special. I have also tried uninstalling and reinstalling the video driver because it acts up occasionally, and I have tried booting into safe mode and the problem remains. I have also been experiencing problems with Proventia Desktop, but I think that is entirely unrelated. It also seems like the longer I leave my computer on, the slower things seem to run and the more problems occur. For example, last night I tried doing the panda software online scan that scans for viruses and malware. I left the computer for about 3 hours and came back to find the scan froze 1/5 of the way through. That's when Proventia started acting up, although the Proventia problem may have been caused by SpyBot because I had done a scan with it just before that. Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

One thing I forgot to mention above is that the device manager shows an exclamation point next to Microsoft System Management BIOS Driver. It says that the driver is either corrupted or missing. This may be because an attempted install of Service Pack 2 crashed. It's a long story behind it, but basically, SP2 won't work with a lot of the drivers I have, which I didn't know when someone told me to install it. It froze halfway or so through and I had to end it. What do I do?

I have decided reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows might solve the problem, but I can't reasonably do that until next weekend, so I'll post the result then.

[Natox]

Deleting the partition and reinstalling windows changed nothing. Now I need some help. Do I need to supply more information? Do you need to know motherboard manufacture, version of windows, etc? Please someone respond.

[bookworm]

Originally Posted by Natox

Deleting the partition and reinstalling windows changed nothing. Now I need some help. Do I need to supply more information? Do you need to know motherboard manufacture, version of windows, etc? Please someone respond.

Don't know if this will be of any use but look at this http://www.esupport.com/global/why.cfm

Hope this helps

[Natox]

Originally Posted by bookworm

Don't know if this will be of any use but look at this http://www.esupport.com/global/why.cfm

Hope this helps

Thanks, but... my computer is kind of brand spanking new, so I don't think it needs a BIOS upgrade. Although I don't know much about these things. Thanks for the reply, nonetheless, since you are the first to say anything. At this point, it is my goal to provide as much information as possible, so that people who know a bunch about it might find what could be causing the problem. Since the computer had the problem as soon as I reinstalled Windows XP SP1, I am assuming the problem lies in the way it is dealing with my hardware. I have a Tyan S2895A2NRF motherboard and 2 AMD Opteron 244 CPU's. Could XP be having trouble with the two processors? Linux works fine, but most programs are more Windows friendly, and I don't know much of anything about Linux. If it weren't for the friendly GUI interface on Linux I have, I would be helpless. Well, I am up for any suggestions or comments. I am going to hunt now for problems with Windows XP and dual processor systems. In case it matters, I have Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1, Version 5.1 Build 2600.xpsp1.020828-1920.

[bookworm]

Originally Posted by Natox

Thanks, but... my computer is kind of brand spanking new, so I don't think it needs a BIOS upgrade. Although I don't know much about these things. Thanks for the reply, nonetheless, since you are the first to say anything. At this point, it is my goal to provide as much information as possible, so that people who know a bunch about it might find what could be causing the problem. Since the computer had the problem as soon as I reinstalled Windows XP SP1, I am assuming the problem lies in the way it is dealing with my hardware. I have a Tyan S2895A2NRF motherboard and 2 AMD Opteron 244 CPU's. Could XP be having trouble with the two processors? Linux works fine, but most programs are more Windows friendly, and I don't know much of anything about Linux. If it weren't for the friendly GUI interface on Linux I have, I would be helpless. Well, I am up for any suggestions or comments. I am going to hunt now for problems with Windows XP and dual processor systems. In case it matters, I have Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1, Version 5.1 Build 2600.xpsp1.020828-1920.

Have a look at this site, these guys build comps, http://www.h-kon.net/forums/

Hope this helps

[Natox]

After searching through the Microsoft Windows XP Knowledge Base a bit, I came across several articles mentioning this problem, and the cause in those cases was battery related. My computer is a desktop, so it doesn't rely on battery power like a laptop, but I have a handy BackUPS from APC, and Windows was having trouble with it. All I had to do was unplug the computer and plug it into a normal outlet, lol. Apparently SP2 provides a hotfix for this, but I think the KB said I can request the specific hotfix since my drivers aren't SP2 compatible. Thank you for your help Barbara.

[SKJoy2001]

Originally Posted by Natox

After searching through the Microsoft Windows XP Knowledge Base a bit, I came across several articles mentioning this problem, and the cause in those cases was battery related. My computer is a desktop, so it doesn't rely on battery power like a laptop, but I have a handy BackUPS from APC, and Windows was having trouble with it. All I had to do was unplug the computer and plug it into a normal outlet, lol. Apparently SP2 provides a hotfix for this, but I think the KB said I can request the specific hotfix since my drivers aren't SP2 compatible. Thank you for your help Barbara.

BIOS battery?

[ktaciak]

Hello,

I have the same problem, but I have notebook Acer TravleMate 4060. What should I do?
thanks for help:

[siroz99]

Hey guys, I was having a similar problem as the OP (in fact, exact same problem as ktaciak above me, with the same laptop - Acer Travelmate 4060 / 4062 - as well). I just wanted to post because I managed to fix my problem with help from you guys.

A few posts above, Natox mentioned it was battery related, so he unplugged his UPS and his problem was solved. I had a laptop, so I just yanked the battery, and instantly the System process stopped using 50-100% of my CPU and dropped to 0%. I can now move my mouse and operate within my system again.

I strongly suggest anyone having this problem to yank their battery or backup to temporarily solve the problem, then install the hotfix Natox mentioned. You should be able to plug your battery back in afterwards. Sweet!

[percypogi]

i tried the same as natox said, remove battery, but still the same 90% cpu usage of System, please any hep

[percypogi]

after 15 minutes of try ttry and try, i made it, like natox said. i removed the battery and reboot. it works like charm. thanks a lot. after 2 days of searching solution done.

[ijsblok]

Hi,

Notox, if you read this, can you paste some links of the articles wich you found on Microsoft Technet regarding the battery-issue you mentioned? I can't find any article related to that.

Can Anyone else?

[haemorrhage]

Hi,

I have a Toshiba Laptop and have this "50% cpu usage" problem. I read about this fix and tried to download it, but recently I updated to XP service pack 3 and it doesn't work for. And SP3 doesn't fix my problem too(it should though). What should I do now ?

[snogen]

I have exactly the same problem with a packard bell laptop. It has a Pentium 4 Hyperthreading cpu and when run with hyperthrading on it uses 50% of the cpu, one of the cores. Turning HT off, The System process takes up 100%. I have tried to remove the batteri and that did not help. I have also upgraded to Windows XP SP3 and that didn't help either. Also the newest drivers have been installed and I have upgraded the bios as well. Nothing helps. I would very much like a solution to this since it is driving me nuts...

[PrompteRaith]

Hi, i've been having the exact same problem. i've got an eMachines desktop (limited income >.<) that i can post more about if needed, it has an AMD Athlon 64 with two hard drives, my main recently reformatted to fix the problem after many many useless scans. It didn't fix the problem when i reinstalled XP home with SP3 slipstreamed in. on an interesting note none of my USB ports seem to work. i've got two 1gb sticks and 2 512 sticks of ram. one of my hard drives (slave) is SATA, other just an ATA. should i run hijack this and post it? on one note when reinstalling windows it froze at 34 minutes and i restarted the computer, it finished installing after skipping that part. i think that has something to do with the USBs.

should i try and install XP x64, would that help perhaps?

the computer was a hand-me-down and i'm trying to get it to work to its potential now.