High CPU usage during idle.

[Xman]

Put together my own pc. All ran well...did the XP Update thing..then the problem began. CPU usage is between 40 - 60% utilization at idle. Thought it was a driver thing on the video or audio cards because it's dog slow to boot up. So I reformatted and re-installed XP. All ran well..then did the update thing again. Now it's back "up" so to speak. Any ideas? Dont' wanna re-install again. All hardware have the latest drivers. HELP please.

Xman

2.4 Ghz. P4
I Gig of Mushkin 3500 Ram (I think its 3500)
SB Audigy Platinum EX
ATI 256 MB Video Card
Norton System Works 2003
Soyo Dragon 2 Black - Just an idea on what I got.

[LooseChippings]

Ctrl - Alt - Delete > Processes ...

Which process is chomping your CPU?

[Xman]

That's the thing...if I "kill" all the processes except the critical ones that it won't let me stop...the CPU still remains High. *Sigh* It goes away after I re-install and it's "bare" with no updates. I heard that a certain Hot-Fix does this, true? maybe I can un-install it if anyone knows which one.

Xman

[jnalpak]

what loosechipping wants you to do is open taskmanager and in the process tab. click on cpu or mem usage (will configure it by size order) and look at which one is the biggest one, cpu would be like 99 and mem usage would be the biggest 50,000k or something like that.

which process is the culprit?

[Xman]

If I click on CPU...and have it ascending...the biggest one is System Idle Process, which is normal (?) at about 90ish and the rest are "normal". Memory's biggest is Explorer at about 30K or so. Hope that answers what you're asking, if not...my brain is fried and I can't understand what you're asking, and I apologize for that.

Xman

[jnalpak]

that would sound normal. when the machine is idle and is at 60% usage thats when you need to look to see whats taking up the most cpu or memusage.

[augie2]

There was a problem with Q811493 slowing the system but MS suppsedly fixed it. Haven't seen this problem for a while.

[LooseChippings]

With the system idle (nothing happening) your 'System Idle Process' should be 90 to 99% CPU and 20KB Memory Usage.

If your 'System Idle Process' drops below 90% when nothing is happening you need to check Task Manager > Processes to find which application is using the CPU, it could be a background virus check or it could be malicious code, (my AVG uses 34% CPU during the nightly background AV System check).

If you are still having problems post back which application(s) are using the CPU during idle periods.

[Xman]

Upon closer examination and more patience...I discovered that in the morning..when the pc is cold, CPU Utilization in the Performance Tab in Task Manager, is normal! When I played a CPU intensive App. say like Black Hawk Down, after awhile...the game gets choppy to unplayable, so I exit and check...CPU is at 50-60% and higher at Idle!!!!! If I reboot..it stays that high...until it cools down. Hmmm.....Loose hardware? faulty hardware?? Ideas?

Xman

[Xman]

Ok folks.. I was losing my mind with this one...but a co-worker suggested I reset the BIOS. So I did, and now it works flawlessly so far. Played games till I got tired...CPU normal. hmm...Soyo Dragon 2 Black is the MoBo in question. Thanks for the tips and suggestions. They were much appreciated.

Xman

[Jarrettmc]

What I think was missed here is that you can look at the processes and there is NOTHING showing unusual. Idle System Processes stay at 98 or 99% where they should be, But if you look at the CPU Bar Graph (in Task Manager), it is alway at 50% or Higher, Mine was usually at 60-65%. The computer is VERY sluggish. In addition if you click on [VIEW] [SHOW KERNAL TIMES] the Kernal is what is taking most of the CPU Usage. This is probably why it won't show up under "Processes".

I tried the BIOS reset and it worked!!! I wen't from 60-65 down to 20% usage by resetting the bios. I guess next I'm going to look for a bios upgrade to "fix" the rest of it. The 20% range is what has been normal for my Windows XP. My machine came with ME and it has been this way since I installed XP. Maybee with a new BIOS upgrade It'll feel like a new machine!

This happed right after I intalled SUSE Linux and one other time I installed Mandrake Linux. RedHat didn't seem to do this to my machine.

[Paldrion]

I was getting high CPU usage with Windows XP and Process explorer was showing that “system idle processes” was taking up 98% of the cpu time.

I used TCPview & you can see what processes are using that process and end them. They were mostly just web ads and network domain connections that just came back after ending.

So, I did a google search and did 3 things. Now I have a bunch of stuff loaded on my laptop and cpu usage is at 0%.

This is what I did:

1) The right click visual effect can kick off the high cpu usage. Follow the steps in this picture:



2) Saved the following to a batch file and ran it:

Net stop wuauserv
Net stop bits
Net stop cryptsvc
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\atl.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\jscript.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\msxml3.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\softpub.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuapi.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuaueng.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuaueng1.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wucltui.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wups.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuweb.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wuauserv.dll /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wupdmgr.exe /s
regsvr32 %windir%\system32\wups2.dll /s

3) Rebooted.

Good Luck!