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Melody ScottFlag for United States of America

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CPU at 100% usage, why?

Hi, I am running windows 7, home version, SP1. Dell Inspiron N7010, 6GB RAM, see attached system.jpg for more.

For the last few days, my CPU usage has been going nuts.  I virus scanned not long ago. After the scan, it seemed to get better. It's hard to even write this, it's so slow.

I've also attached screenshots of CPU usage, processes and the resource monitor. I know MSMpEng is the microsoft security essentials. I'm not currently scanning or backing up anything. Thanks for your help.
system.JPG
cpu-usage.JPG
processes.JPG
resource-monitor.JPG
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Curiously, if I open task manager with the window on performance, CPU will be 35% or higher, and immediately drop to 2 %. That does seem like a virus-ey thing. Running Norton power scan. I also downloaded process explorer and ran it, it didn't seem to show anything out of whack. Thanks, all.
It wouldn't hurt to add more RAM to your system, too. Looks like you're doing some web development and those Firefox instances hog a chunk of memory. In addition to your CPU being tapped, your RAM is too.

You may also want to run MSCONFIG and disable any startup items you don't need to see if that helps.
CPU will be 35% or higher, and immediately drop to 2 %.  <-- For just Task Manager that is strange. Maybe high CPU for a second or two while task manager starts is OK. Task Manager does not use any CPU.
Hi, William, It looks like the max it will take is 8GB RAM. Is an extra 2GB going to make an appreciable difference? Thanks. When I got the laptop a few years ago, it was lightning fast with multiple graphics programs open. I probably need to do some basic maintenance again. I did look at Msconfig startup, it's pretty light at the moment.
6 GB vs 8 GB will not cause 100% CPU, so there is something else going on, perhaps temporary based on your posts.
What Antivirus software do you have?
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You mention using norton power scan and that MSMpEng is running.   Hopefully the norton power scan installed was not part of their antivirus suite.  If so, I assure you that two antivirus products installed at the same time is very likely to cause performance issues and even stability problems in some cases.   Uninstall one of them to see how things run.  Norton is the biggest resource hog, but MSE is the easiest to uninstall.
Hi- I had disabled Microsoft Security essentials. In any case, neither norton power scan or norton free virus scan found any threats. I guess I'll try adaware and maybe malwarebytes?
Are you sure it was disabled all the way through? It shouldn't be running if that was the case.
I uploaded the images, then downloaded Norton, disabled MSE and then ran the two norton scans. I did check the processes, and MSMpEng  wasn't running. In any case, the problem with the huge CPU use was before I looked at Norton at all.
Question- I'll see CPU at 95, 100%, then switch over to the processes window, and nothing there is very high. Maybe firefox will be at 20%, then a 1, 2 after. That's if I sort by CPU.

Does that mean there's something else running that isn't in processes? How can I find it? I looked under Services, and nothing there seems suspicious.  I'm not sure how a virus works, would it necessarily show up in processes?

I'm assuming this is a virus problem.
Next Question. :)  I have crsss.exe (one instance) in my processes window. There's no description. If I right-click and choose properties on other processes, a properties window opens. Not so on this one.

Should I be suspicious?
Most software will give you a description and I don't recognize this. Do a search and see where it is located.
Sorry, it's csrss.exe
That's a legitimate part of Windows. Client Server Runtime Subsystem. You'd end up blue screening the computer by ending it, and even more issues if you got rid of people. There's been a long running hoax that it's a virus.
Yes now that it is clarified, it is part of my windows.
And it's in system32.
Hi- I'm taking it in to an expert. He told me to turn off all the services under startup in msconfig, and I did, then rebooted. I still have 25-30% CPU usage without anything running.

Thanks for your help, this feels beyond me.
See what he says . It does appear to be malware of some sort.
look also at the disk tab in resource manager - what is accessing your disk most
You should download system explorer(free).    http://systemexplorer.net/  

It might give you a better view into whats going on or at the least zero in closer to the issue.
It can drill down a bit better than most other tools.  
Run as administrator for most capability,  
Some of its features that may be useful in your situation.

1.  It can security check one or all processes (optional)  
2. It lists processes in a tree hierarchy and for each item you can ...
    o  right click >> details  to see a last minute, last hour, last day usage graphs.
    o  community info, google search, additional process details and controls
3. Click the +tab to open the connection tab to see what apps/processes are doing in the outside world
   o  right click connected Apps/processes for more (whois, info lookup, directory, etc)

You nay also want to see how your system runs in safe mode (with/without networking).  its a bit cleaner than just stopping services in msconfig.
Thanks, everyone, he said I had a lot of junk (no big surprise), and that there was a program running from the recycle bin. He also got rid of MSE and installed Avast Free. It's a whole lot better. Thanks for all your advice!
Thanks for the update. I am not having any issue with MSE but it is running on a very vanilla Windows 7 virtual machine