NT Kernel & System uses 100% of CPU ?

Guys ...
Something odd is happening.
All of a sudden, a process called 'NT Kernel & System' began using 100% of my CPU.
It's been going at it for the past 10 mins or so, and apparently shows no indication of stopping.

I realize that this process is apparently crucial to Vista's operation, but suddenly for it to use 100% of the CPU is not exactly standard given the fact it never did that before.

If anyone can offer a solution, I'm open to it.
I can restart the OS ... and it will probably fix the issue, but there's no guarantee it won't happen again.

I've tried googling for a solution ... thus far, nothing of consequence.

I contemplated on returning to XP from day one, but Vista was not giving me any issues after tweaking it and removing all of the unnecessary garbage that came with the laptop (at least not up until this point).
Now though, I'm seriously considering going back to XP Pro SP3.
Other people on the net have apparently reported this issue, though no solution was provided.

 

Can you run HijackThis and post the log?

What sidebar gadgets you have installed?

 

Usually I use Spybot, although I haven't had a chance to run it just yet.
HijackThis ... I can download, run it and post the log if it's gonna be of any help.

As for sidebar gadgets ... I killed those along with numerous other useless features (at least they are in my opinion) on day 1.

 

There we go

 

IMO there is nothing suspicious in the log...

I'm pretty sure it's some process causing this. You may try to turn off processes one by one until(eventually) you find the one that is causing this..

 

Wait ... you're suggesting that some other process is doing this?
Then why is Task Manager reporting a process under the name 'NT Kernel & System' as the one using all the CPU?

 

Go to Run

Type in MSCONFIG

Go to startup.

See if you see anything suspicious that is starting up w/ your computer.

Disable it and reboot. See if this fixes your CPU redline.

Post back let me know.

From your HijackThis post I didnt see much that could be considered suspicious. Everything looked relatively normal.

 

NT Kernel & System is actually ntoskrnl.exe.

Maybe it's a virus...check with online scanner.

IMO, something is forcing this process to "eat" the cpu. Note that sometimes a regular program can cause this excessive cpu usage that's why I'm suggesting you to close processes one by one till you find the problem..

 

I already checked the boot setup and nothing apart 5 small programs (the ones I usually use/need) starts up with the OS.

I rebooted the OS and the issue was fixed (as I suspected it would).

And the reason why the 'NT Kernel & System' shows up in my Task Manager is because I set it up so it displays processes from all users.

Everything is working fine now as far as I can tell.
I'm gonna run the a/v and spybot tomorrow in safe mode though just in case (even though there's a good possibility that nothing lodged itself into the OS).

 

I am also seeing this process running on my computer with suspicious behaviour. I run a bandwidth monitor program so that I can watch how much ISP bandwidth is being used since my ISP degrades my bandwidth rate if I exceed a certain monthly limit. A number of times I have seen the bandwidth monitor showing large transfers in progress when the computer should be idle. On Windows Vista I then run perfmon (which comes with Vista) which will show the system cpu, disk, network, etc. utilization, and which will show the processes using the network utilization and the addresses they are transferring to. The NT Kernel & System process is always the one doing the transfer, and it has connections to addresses outside my local subnet, and it also has connections to other computers in my house and is actively transfering data between the computers. I don't have any programs running which should be transfering data between my computers that I know about. This seems very much like a virus and/or spyware spreading itself.

 

I haven't used perfmon since the NT 3.51 days. Much more user friendly with the Vista version. It does show NT Kernel & System in the description for system in the image column. My average CPU is 4.24% right now.

Go into regedit and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa and look at Authentication Packages and see what if anything is after the key value msv1_0. Sometimes malware gets itself authenticated in the LSA.

You might try Wilder's if you don't find a solution on this forum. http://www.wilderssecurity.com/index.php