High cpu usage with vista sp1

I just formatted my machine with vista sp1 and I am already having issues.

I don't know why, but my cpu is running at around 40% constantly. When i run my machine in safe mode, the problem goes away and my usage is around 4% which is normal.

I have tried getting rid of junk files and making sure that nothing non vital to the system is running at startup.

I have tried uninstalling graphics and audio drivers, incidentally uninstalling graphics drivers is far too difficult in vista, and neither has helped me at all. I even used driver cleaner pro when uninstalling graphics drivers just to be safe.

Since the machine's usage is very small is safe mode, I am assuming that it is a driver issue, and once i figure out which driver it is, i can reinstall it.

the problem is that i don't see any other drivers that could be causing this issue.

I will not format this machine unless that is the only way I can fix this.

Can anyone shed some light on what the issue could be, I am very confused.

 

Download and run Process Explorer, available here, to pinpoint what the issue is. I'm betting that Hardware Interrupts is the one that's consuming your CPU.

 

Find the CPU hogging process in the Task Manager.
Most likely it will be one of the "svchost.exe" processes. Turn off Automatic updates and see if that helps. Be sure to check for updates manually.

 

Vista in the beginning always tends to spike up cpu usage, due to some processes management.

You can try turning off disk indexing and the search services and check again.

cheers ...

 

I'll check out process manager, I don't think it is the svchost.exe because they are all using 0% of cpu in task manager. And even if it were one of them, i really don't know how to tell which one, or what to do about it if i actually knew.

Also, this isn't just in the beginning, my computer is constantly running at such high a cpu usage. I will also try shutting off disk indexing and search services.

thanks.

 

i tried process explorer and it looks like hardware interrupts is what is causing this. I have no idea which piece of hardware it is.

what do i do now?

 

Do you by any chance have a HP printer driver suite installed? I had a problem where the full printer suite kept jumping up my processor usage to 40%-50% but the basic driver for printing did not.

 

no, no drivers other than the drivers from foxconn, audio and video. that's it.

 

In Task Manager, Processes tab, click "Show processes from all users". Then click the CPU column to sort. Which processes are using a lot of CPU?

Also, what's your computer's make and model, and what GPU do you have?

 

Problem solved.

The issue was hardware interrupts. I looked online how people fixed these issues, and one person said that microsoft updates caused this.

i decided to restore my machine to an earlier point, right after i installed all drivers that came with the machine, and it worked.

cpu usage spikes at 20% now, when starting a program, and then settles to around 2%.

I also reinstalled my display drivers, and no issues with usage, so it looks like it was a microsoft update.

thanks for your help guys, if anyone else is having this issue, try uninstalling microsoft updates that you have installed lately.