Safe Mode Update: system still uses 50% cpu on system process in safe mode.
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VISTA Ultimate System Process using constant 50% CPU
I've got a gigabyte board, AMD quad core cpu and 4 gig ram.
Recent install, all suggested updates done.
Task manager shows System Process is using 50% cpu. It pretty much never goes lower than 50%.
I noticed that if I open a few browsers with a bunch of sites, they don't use very much cpu - I might see up to say 60% - system still at 50%.
If I keep everything closed and look at resource monitor the CPU stays at 50%, even when the Disk access, network, and Hard Faults are all at zero for 60 seconds straight.
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Answers
A great tool for troubleshooting this sort of thing is ProcessExplorer. I was able to find a program that was making the system process (aka Windows Kernel) run at above 50%. Here's what you can do. Download ProcessExplorer if you don't have it already:
http://technet.microsoft.c
Fire it up with admin privileges (right-click, run as administrator). Find the system process, right click on it and choose "Properties". Click on the threats tab and you can see all of the threads running through the system process and how much CPU they are using. Click on the CPU column to sort by highest CPU usage. Which ever process has the highest utilization is what's causing it.
If it is a .sys file, then it's a driver. You can use the "Module" button to view the properties of the offending process. If it is a .sys file, be careful. While you can actually kill individual threads in the kernel using ProcessExplorer, you could potentially get a bluescreen or hard crash if you kill a driver. Find out what it is, and safely uninstall the driver and / or application that uses it. It may not be a hardware driver - it could be a software driver for something like an anti-virus software.
And if the offending process is NTOSKRNL.EXE or NTKRNLPA.EXE, it will be harder to track because this is the Kernel image itself. It would be hard to say whether or not Windows itself was damaged, but it could still possibly be another using kernel resources that's causing it.
Per MSDN, ExQueueWorkItem is a kernel command that drivers can call to queue up driver tasks. Unfortunately a bad driver can freeze up the queue (Microsoft even says "Use this routine with extreme caution" in their documentation).
http://msdn.microsoft.com/
Try uninstalling the NVIDIA driver and see if it goes away. While I trust NVIDIA drivers, it is still possible for the download to get corrupt, something to not quite register properly during install, etc. Also, try replacing any generic Microsoft drivers in the Device Manager with official vendor drivers when possible. Based on past experience, Windows update can even install the wrong driver for a piece of hardware. :p
It is not an endemic Vista problem in my experience. If malware cannot be the problem, then consider another fresh install and make certain (a) the machine is certified for Vista and (b) that you get every possible driver (like chipset drivers) from the manufacturer. Install and test before adding any new software. .... Thinkpads_User
Yeah that sounds about right. FIrefox isn't CPU intensive unless one of the tabs is actively doing something (streaming media, playing flash, etc). As far as a new install is concerned, if you do it, make sure you do a deep format of your drive first (if possible). Doing a little digging, one person with an issue similar to yours had a bad hard drive. The failing drive was causing the drive's drivers to go haywire. You may not have a bad drive, but you might have a corrupt filesystem or a bad sector. You might want to try running CHKDSK before you re-install just in case.
Also, if you do finally resort to re-installing, I would recommend checking the CPU usage from the get go. If you do not notice it immediately after install, then check it after each additional driver and / or program you install on the OS (or even Windows Updates). You'll be more likely to find the cause of the issue this way.
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by: leos_Posted on 2009-10-19 at 19:34:12ID: 25610663
I also noticed, the cpu accumulative time in task manager counts fast - ie: 2 seconds at a time for both system and system idle processes.