High CPU usage in Win10 v1909

Topic

New Reply

Has any of you experienced abnormal high CPU usage?

https://news.softpedia.com/news/windows-10-version-2004-fixes-one-long-time-windows-bug-529820.shtml

Reply | Quote

Replies

Thomas wrote:

Has any of you experienced abnormal high CPU usage?

Never.

I don’t index anything on Windows OS. I can find anything I want in a split of a second using portable Everything app.

Reply | Quote

I had the same issue and found that it was the “Optimize Drives” service that was causing my problems. When I left the computer idle for a short time I noticed that my hard drive light on my desktop computer was flashing constantly. When I traced down the problem using the Task Manager, that is when I found the optimize background process causing the problem. Even though I went in the “Defrag” app and turned that off, that did not stop the optimize from running. So I disabled the “Optimize Drives” service and that took care of it. I use a third party defrag program to keep my files together on my 3tb HDD.

Reply | Quote

Whose is the optimize drive service? (Right click on the executable.)

If it’s from Microsoft you should let it run to completion at least once, then monitor it for CPU use – and check the Event Log for disk errors.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

It is Microsoft’s product. I will turn it back on and see how long it continues and monitor the CPU usage after that. Thanks for the tip.

Reply | Quote

My Acer 2 in 1 has just started doing this.  I turned it on yesterday fro the first time in a month and it just sits with 100% cpu usage with service and controller app using most of it.  I cannot do anything with it as it is totally cpu bound.

Any suggestions other than a total re-install?

Reply | Quote

I turned on the “optimize drives” service and let it run for 2 days. It never seems to finish and continues to take up cpu time and heavy hard disk access. I had to turn it off again by disabling it because it will wear out my hard drive with this much activity all the time, plus when I go back on to use the system, it does not always stop right away and so I am slowed down on what I am doing. Not happy with Microsoft on this.

Reply | Quote

I’d check the disk for other issues.
Run the manufacturers diags.
Run CHKDSK.
Also SFC and DISM.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

In Task Manager you can see what processes are using the CPU. Click on the Performance tab, then Open Resource Monitor at the bottom, click on the CPU tab.
What is the name of the process hogging the CPU?

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

den4

Reply | Quote

[den4]

Hi Paul

In task manager it shows “service and controller app” as the the culprit using the most cpu.  Resmon shows it as sevices.exe

In both cases it uses about 90% of the cpu for that process.

I’ve tried booting into safe mode, where it run as usual with no xs cpu usage.  Then I got it to remove the last update (thinking it may be that), rebooted in normal mode but the 100% cpu usage is still the same.

Den

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by den4.

Reply | Quote

den4 wrote:

In task manager it shows “service and controller app”

Did you right-click on the task to find details or file location ?

1 user thanked author for this post.

den4

Reply | Quote

Alex5723 wrote:

den4 wrote:

In task manager it shows “service and controller app”

Did you right-click on the task to find details or file location ?

It reports back as services.exe in folder Windows/System32

Reply | Quote

Fire up Microsoft Process Explorer and view all “services.exe” sub-processes. It will show which one is which.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

Thanks both for your help, I have solved the problem.

During a reboot I noticed a message come up from something called SAntivirus, a program I did not intentionally or knowingly install.  Removing it has put the pc back into useable form.

I checked what I had installed on the same date this AV was installed and I installed 2 programs, Open Office and DoNotSpy10- both of which I had installed before with no problem.

Clearly on this instance I missed a, probably very small, notice with a tick box, and the offending program was installed with it.

I’m guessing that the lock up cpu useage was this program vying with the inbuilt MS program.

Anyway all is back to normal now, or as normal as Win 10 can be!

Reply | Quote

I have never had an add-on program installed with Open Office downloaded from openoffice.org

If you downloaded Open Office from the developer, it was most likely an add-on from DoNotSpy10

2 users thanked author for this post.

Microfix, satrow

Reply | Quote

No I’ve never had that problem with OpenOffice before. I agree it’s come from DoNotSpy10.

I’m usually pretty careful looking for these crafty add-ins but this one sneaked past me.

Reply | Quote

Might pay to check details about any potentially useful software download at Majorgeeks:

When installing DoNotSpy10 be sure to watch out for one third party program it offers to install. A portable version would be nice here as well as suggested items to remove that won’t affect your system’s security. Otherwise, it’s a great Windows 10 anti-privacy tool.

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/donotspy10.html

(My security doesn’t allow me to access the software developers’ site.)

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, Microfix

Reply | Quote

In addition to what you found, there are any number of Windows and hardware-vendor-supplied services that are all too happy to monopolize the CPU at startup.  If you can even get Task Manager to load while they’re doing their things you can see what they are, do a quick search, and determine which of them can be safely turned off or completely eliminated.  Some Dell “helpful” utilities are notorious for this!

Now if the update downloaders would just get out of the way and let somebody else use the hard drive some of the time…

Reply | Quote

dsliesse wrote:

If you can even get Task Manager to load while they’re doing their things…

From the guy who wrote Task Manager:

– CTRL-SHIFT-ESC will launch Taskmgr without any help from the Shell, so if the Shell/Explorer is dead use this key combo to bring up TM and then reset/restart the shell. Even if your tray is missing and gone, this combo should start it.

– If the shell can’t start something or is hung, try Task Manager. It has a mode where it will load without ANY references to the shell32.dll and allow you to start programs like CMD.EXE without the start menu.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

Reply | Quote

The issues discussed here sound very similar to my problems which I posted about a month ago:-

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/windows-10-freezes-on-two-different-systems/

I am still no nearer to resolving the issue but read this with interest.

There was reference to something called SAntivirus which I had never heard of, nor could I find any evidence that I had it on my system.

Using Resource Manager as suggested typically shows the blue system line near the top and green usage quite low. Using other tool shows a task called System Idle consuming a very high percentage of CPU time. I suspect this is the blue line.

When my problem occurs, the green line rises to 100% and swamps the chart in the worst case everything stops (including plots by Resource Manager) for a period of about 5 seconds. It does not push the blue line any higher before the system becomes swamped.

Does this type of behaviour sound familiar to anyone.

 

Regards, Paul Dixon

Reply | Quote

rpd wrote:

Using other tool shows a task called System Idle consuming a very high percentage of CPU time

System Idle shows free CPU not used CPU.
If you click on the CPU column you’ll get CPU usage by process from high to low

Reply | Quote

System Idle shows free CPU not used CPU.

I perhaps didn’t put that very well, but it was a response to a comment that the blue line of  system tasks seemed to be near the 100%. I am perfectly aware what system idle is and means.

Reply | Quote