CPU usage is always 100%

My CPU usage has always been up around 70-100% for a couple of days now, and the comp's been running very slow. When I go to Task Manager > Processes, however, there's nothing with a CPU usage higher than 10%, ever. The total of all the processes' CPU usage is no higher than 20%. Down at the bottom of Task Manager it says the CPU usage is around 80%, though.

Is there another place that shows other things using the CPU, or is something hidden? Or is it, **gasp** a virus?

 

Click the "Show processes from all users", and you should see what your CPU is working on.

 

Download Process Explorer (link in my signature) and run it. See what is consuming a lot of CPU usage - if something called Hardware Interrupts is using a lot of your CPU (which does not show up in Windows Task Manager), it could mean a driver is malfunctioning.

 

i bet a flying pig that the process turns out to be svchost.exe

 

Got a restore point? Try it. Could be a bad driver.

cheers ...

 

If you are using a laptop, sounds to me like there could be a lot of dust blocking your air vent in the back of your laptop. This will result in all the things you have mentioned like the cpu constantly running at 100% even when you are not doing much, and the system performance to be sluggish for the most common tasks.

 

I am viewing the processes from all users - and there's still nothing higher than around 20% at highest.

 

Come to think of it, my network driver has been giving me errors lately, but I didn't think to make the connection to the CPU usage. I'll try reinstalling the driver.

A system restore point would be too costly now, because I'd need to restore to a few weeks ago, and I'd lose so much work and so many settings.

 

I don't mind my CPU usage at all, because sometimes it gives inaccurate results. Have you scanned your P.C. for viruses? Malwares/adwares/spywares?

How about your harddisk usage? is it near full... there are quite a lot of factors that affects your P.C. speed.

 

Hope, for your sake, that you don't lose that bet

 

Please explain how blocked dust ports could cause the CPU to run at 100%? It might cause the FAN to run constantly but the FAN and the CPU are two totally different things.

Gary

 

Do the ones you see total to 100%? Do you have the option to display ALL processes turned on? (Lower left corner of the Task Manager display.)

With the list sorted by CPU use highest to lowest, take a screen shot and post it here.

Gary

 

Scratch that. I did have the "processes from all users" box checked, but it just so happened that every time I looked at the list, the culprit (werfault.exe) was down at like 1%, and was down at the bottom of the list sorted by CPU usage.

I've traced werfault.exe to the Windows error solution system thing, and traced that to a background error I kept getting about my wireless network driver. So, I've reinstalled my wireless network card driver, and everything's working fine!

 

Still just one more question, though. About once every 2 weeks, I'd say, Explorer says that free space on my C drive is down at like 100KB, which is totally wrong. I can't even browse the internet, because of memory issues. Even after restarts it stays like this. I try deleting big folders (about 500MB to a few GB), but it only frees up a couple hundred KB. It always fixes itself within 2 days, and free space is back up at 40-50GB where it belongs, though. Would you say it's a virus?

Edit: I've done scans with Spybot and McAfee and they've come up clean.

 

I'd say you need to find out what it is, not guess that it is a virus. Just like the issue with the 100% CPU usage, you can imagine all sorts of things it MIGHT be, but the only way to know is arm yourself with the right tools. For this new issue get WinDirStat, SpaceMonger or any of the other apps that enumerate the directory and show you how much each directory is taking up. Get a baseline and save it away. Then when the problem pops up run the app again. Compare the two and you will know where the storage went. With that you should be able to figure out WHY, or at least know where to start.

Gary

 

no it is restore points i always turn off system restore it eats up hdd space

 

You do realize that svchost.exe is simply a wrapper to run another program (any other program you want) as a service, right? svchost is not a magic CPU sucking beast.