CPU Being Hogged

Are there too many processes running and are u able to identify which one is maxing it out? How much RAM do you have? Adding more might help if ur running memory intensive programs. To improve performance you cud also try checking if its a heat problem and check if all fans are working properly, blow out the dust if u havent in ages. Also run a disk cleanup and defragment the drive.

Go here to download Hijack This. Then scan but do not fix anything yet. Save the scan to a log and then copy and paste the results of scan into a new thread in the Hijack This and Spyware removal forum

Hi Crow,
I just came from the Hijack This and Spyware removal forum.All spyware has been removed & system cleaned. also defragmented disk & checked running processes.

All fans are working & running cool. It maxes out at any use at all, so I'm not able to pin it to any one process.

I have a P4 2.66ghz cpu with 1.0 gb of ram.

Here is the link so you can see exactly what we did.

http://forums.tomcoyote.org/index.php?showtopic=48645


If you need more info let me know.

Suggest you open the tak manager (ctrl-alt-del) and the task manager button. Go to the processes tab and make sure the cpu and cpu time columns are showing. If not use View - Select columns and check the cpu usage and cpu timer boxes. Click on the cpu column to sort by cpu usage (high to low). When the cpu usage is maxed out are there any processes using a high percentage of the cpu? Click on the cpu time column to sort by cpu time (high to low). Are there any processes that are using a high portion of the cpu time? Go to the performance tab Under the physcial memory does it show 1047272 total ( 1 GB RAM should) How much memory does it show as available in the physical memory box? Under the view option make sure show kernel times is checked? This will make the cpu usage of the kernel shows in red on the graph. When maxed out on cpu usage the green should should be about 100%. Is the red line up there near 100% also, or is it much lower? This can help determine if it is an application using the cycles up, or the OS using them? Other thing I would suggest is to check if you have any network drives mapped that are no longer available? This can slow the OS down. If so, unmap the drives.

Old mapped network drives has nothing to do with it, so dont worry about that. That will not in any way slow anything down. I am not exactly sure why Klutek posted any of that so I think I will step aside here and see were hes going with it. He may know something I dont.

Hi Crow, Thanks for yor time! Ken.

Hi. Looks like your system is seeing all the RAM installed and has plenty free. So your system should not be seeing a lot of swapping of virtual memory to and from the hard drive. That can slow things down and chew up CPU cycles. The CPU time shows the total number of cycle that a program has used. For example your CPU was idle for 8hr 0m and 16 sec. For example I am running a 3.2 GHz P4 with 1 GB RAM. Unless I am runing something either very disk intensive or very computational I usually see 96-97% of the CPU as idle. Most programs take only a few percent of the CPU cycle on my machine. Now if I let my BOINC screen saver that is crunching away at SETI@home or protein folding run in the background, I see it taking up all the free cycles - 96% with no idle. Now BOINC runs at a low priority setting, so it does not interfere with my using most other programs. My idle CPU time is 6 hr 11 min, and the next highest is my print service at 4m 45 sec. This gives a feel for what is using the CPU cycles. Sounds like on your computer there is a fairly big difference between the idle cycles and the next highest CPU time. So there is not an application program that is using up all the cycles. Unfortunately, it is possible to hide processes from the task manager. Windows hides most of the operating processes from task manager. When you see the red line and gren line both maxing near 100% it shows that it is those hidden OS processes that are using up most of the CPU cycles. As an example when I am running the BOINC program that is using up the idle cycles my green line is at 100%, but my red line is close to zero. Another program I use compares files in various directories to detect which are different. If I look at CPU useage under process tab it show only a couple percent of CPU usage. However, if I look at the performance tab I see 50-60% usage with the green line and red lines being basically the same. There is so much disk IO the system processes are using a lot of CPU cycles. So on your machine it appears the usage is mainly the hidden/system processes since you said the red line and green lines are almost the same when the usage spikes near 100%. One thing I have seen that can sometime cause the OS to use a lot of cycles is on laptop that is taken to work and hooked into a domain that maps network drives as drives on the computer. Then if you take the laptop home and are now on the work network, some services can look for the these drives and use a lot of cycles waiting for responses that never come. If you open My Computer, and look under type it will say if there are any disconnected network drives. You say you just been though a process to remove all spyware, cleaned the computer, made sure all fans are running, defragmented the hard drive. Those should have removed a lot of potential causes. I suggest right click on My computer, select manage. Then click on the + my event viewer. Select system and check the right hand panel to see if there are a lot of errors being generated. You can right click on a error and select properties to get more information. Also check the security and applications section for errors. We are looking for something out of the ordinary, since your system used to run bettter. Click on the device manager and make sure there are no devices showing red x's or yellow i's. click on disk management and check it is showing your disk drive as healthy. What percent of free space do you have on your hard drive? I will look at that Hijack log and see if i see anything, though i am sure the people in that section are better at it then me. Did you apply the XP updates that were released last week? I have seen they can sometimes cause problems? Or did CPu hogging start before then?

Ok.. first.. With a gig of ram.. you hardly need a pagefile (dont need one honestly but for the sake of argument) Swapping shouldnt hardly even show up. If you got a system running DDR then the whole "cycles" issue is out the door. Secondly, Windows searches (polls) for anything plug-n-play about every secoond. While that sounds like alot, its not enough to show up. Now with "old" network drives.. mapped or not…Windows will recognize this at boot. If they cannot be connected, you will get a little popup over by the system tray telling you that all network drives couldnt be re-connected and to click here for more info. Once that happens, the polling issue becomes a non-issue. Aside from the fact that polling itself (2 to 6 services tops) is not nearly enough to show up.. much less cause major CPU usage. Now..what you need to do is find out what process (as previously mentioned) is causing this usage. cntrl-alt-delete will bring up task manager, under the process tab, look and see which it is. Explorer is the number one "taker" of CPU usage. However..my bet is this is your problem–>O23 - Service: McAfee SecurityCenter Update Manager (mcupdmgr.exe) - McAfee, Inc - D:\PROGRA~1\McAfee.com\Agent\mcupdmgr.exe

Hi Klutek, No disconnected network drives. next I see alot of errors & warnings in the areas you told me to check. next I see no devices showing red x's or yellow i's. next [C:] Healthy [System] 109gb free. [D:] Healthy [Boot] 8.4gb free next I applied updates last night, but I was having problems way before that. Let me know if you need more info. Thanks alot. Ken.

Hi Crow, I removed O23 - Service: McAfee SecurityCenter Update Manager (mcupdmgr.exe) - McAfee, Inc - D:\PROGRA~1\McAfee.com\Agent\mcupdmgr.exe with hijackthis. No change. let me know if you need more info. Thanks, Ken.

eeek..! Thats not what I intended on you doing. That entry is a McAfee service.. you didnt remove it. Thats what I think the cause is. In order for that to stop you would need to uninstall McAfee.

Hi Crow, Do you have any suggestions on how I should proceed? Ken.

Hi I think I would recommend go to start button - run - type in msconfig go to the startup tab and uncheck everything unless it seems to be clearly necessary (like audio driver) go to the services tab and uncheck your McAfee Update manager service (if mcupdmgr.exe is running as a service. You can check the box Hide All Microsoft Services, and what is left is services installed by applications. You can uncheck any you think are unecessary for basic operations. Reboot and see how your computer runs. You will have stopped those programs and services from running. If it seems ok, Then run msconfig and add back a few items each time. Reboot and check performance. Hopefully, you will find adding one back suddenly hurts the performance. If any problems on booting for some reason, you can always boot into safe mode and recheck items. Also on the errors in the manage - event viewer - system - how often are they ocurring every second or once an hour? Frequent ones would be of concern? are any of them disk errors under source? Again frequent disk errors can be cauiing a lot of cpu usage again you can select an error and right click on it, choose properties to see more information on the error.