How do I log CPU utilization of every process?

Some process on my Win 8 is causing CPU utilization spikes. It doesn't happen very often so catching it with Task Manager is difficult. Is there any way I can log utilization of all processes and find the offender without staring at my screen for hours?

 

Download process explorer from technet, and in the columns right click and add cpu history. This will give a cpu usage graph for each process. I am surprised more don't know about this... It has a ton of features.

 

Thanks.

The spiking process is Windows Defender's "Antimalware Service Executable". Googled and many people have this problem. Looks like I have to choose between spiking and turning off real-time protection.

 

Glad process explorer worked. I have used it sincd XP days, and even have it replace task manager (under options, replace task manager) I don't know why cpu history is not a default column.

In the AV tests I have seen, Win Defender didn't do so well. Try Avast for free, or AVG free.

 

Thanks for the reply.

After tuning off real-time protection I've found that Windows Update is another offender. Awwwww...

 

You can disable Win Defender and Win Auto updates.

Use MSE for free and will disable Defender for you: Download Microsoft Security Essentials from Official Microsoft Download Center

Run Win Updates on second Tuesday of every month.

Easy fix.

 

You can't install MSE on Windows 8 because Defender is MSE.

 

I have Real-Time Protection in W8 Defender turned off anyway. Like any real-time background scanning, it negatively impacts system throughput (CPU cycles, primary and secondary storage I/O) in a small but measurable way, which you've discovered. The effect is more pronounced on slower PC's or ones with slow mechanical hard drives. Leaving Real-Time Protection off doesn't leave your system any less protected as long as you practice some Common Sense.

The best anti-virus is called Common Sense. Google it.

 

Oops, missed the W8 part, sorry And also use a standard account and not administrator one.

Even my old, now dead single core dell inspiron with 1G memory and 7200 HDD from 8 years ago did not suffer from MSE and WU.

 

The CPU doesn't suffer and the system is still responsive. Both WD and WU seems to be single-threaded, so on a quad core I still have 3 cores left. The problem is, my machine (Clevo W230ST) has a very aggressive fan profile. Whenever CPU utilization spikes the fan kicks in hard and it sounds like there's a server room next door.

Since I use Windows only for gaming I guess I'll forget AV and switch to manual update. As long as Stream doesn't play funny tricks I should be fine.

 

Back when I was running Windows 7 on a slow 5400 RPM HDD in my ASUS G73JH, turning on Real-Time Protection in MSE would cause hitching in Source and UE3 games since they stream a lot of data from disk throughout gameplay. General Windows responsiveness was affected slightly as well with opening things like MSConfig and parsing through large folders taking a few seconds longer. The system had pretty decent specs otherwise-quad-core i7, Mobility Radeon 5870, 8GB DDR3-but the secondary storage bottleneck really highlighted the disk I/O impact of a real-time background scanner such as MSE. If you guys are running 7200 RPM HDD's, SSHD's, or SSD's, you'd probably never know the difference, but for me turning off Real-Time Protection provided a noticeable increase in system responsiveness. Not massive, but certainly noticeable, and the absence of stuttering in certain games was definitely appreciated.

Although I have read that with Windows 8 Defender, Microsoft tweaked Real-Time Protection to have much less of a system impact than it did in MSE. However I have no way to validate this.