Vista Runs @ 100% load all the time.

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Vista runs 100% loaded all the time.
I have checked for viruses and Malware using several searchers.
I have searched online for solutions to this issue.
I have disabled all startup items.
Windows seems to startup OK and runs @ ~ 2% for a short while creeping up in CPU and MEMORY usage until it hits 100% in about 10 – 15 minutes.
I cannot do a backup. It fails saying it timed out. I cannot do a backup in safe mode.
It seems like it is feeding itself with busy work. It never completely locks up but it takes forever to respond to mouse clicks. Task manager always works but that doesn’t fix the clog. Logging off and back on doesn’t fix the clog so it may not be windows.
A restart works to start over.

I have run out of things to try.
It is E-machine 3.33Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 125Gb HDD, C:, D:, E: partitions. C has 5 GB free space. It is not a disk issue. I have a 1TB external drive.

I need to know how to trouble shoot it.
I am medium Knowledgeable. I am a BEE Electronics HP*31Years, retired.
I use FF 39, SpybotSD, Sup anti spyware and CCleaner. The cash is clean and it does this off /on line.

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[*]What edition of Vista are you using? (e.g. Starter/Home Basic/Home Premium/Business/Enterprise/Ultimate and x32 or x64)
[*]Do you have Service Pack 1 (and subsequent updates) installed?
[*]Do you have AV installed? (and, if so, what?)
[*]When usage (CPU/Memory) climbs after about 10 – 15 minutes, have you been watching using Task Manager (with a tick in the Show processes from all users checkbox), sorted on the CPU column. If so, what shows?

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I forgot to ask…

I’m guessing this is an eMachine laptop? What model no. (in case it’s a known issue)?

Have you carried out any checks for overheating in case this is the cause (i.e. after 10-15 minutes)? Can you hear any fan activity?

Sorry to ask all the questions but the more info you can give then the more likely it is that someone on the forum may have a ‘I know what that is’ lightbulb moment about a device that is apparently ~10 years old.

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Windows Update hogging a single core CPU?

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Windows Update hogging a single core CPU?

That was my first thought… but I thought I’d ask for some background info first before suggesting turning off WU. 🙂 )

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Thank You for the reply/questions.
I have E machine T3604 tower. It is clean dust free. Fan is running. It is not hot.
Vista Home Premium. 2 GB ram, SP2, all recommended updates. Some optional updates hidden.
I don’t know AV unless you mean VLC and ANT.
I don’t believe the Updater is running.
I flush cookies often, no help.
Something is running in the background but I don’t know how to find out what it is. Task manager shows nothing.

Running processes screen shot. (all users)

45798-processes-145799-processes-2

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Right-click the svchost in Task Manager that’s showing the high CPU% and high memory usage and select Go to Services, is the WU Service running (highlighted) under that?

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Further: Win update is not on auto download. It is set to advise me and I download manually, usually important not the nice to have BS.
This issue is maybe 6 months old. I’ve never had an issue with WU before.
I can run a temp check SW if I know which one to download and run.
I can shut off WU if we know how to start it back up.
I have the original OEM Vista Home Prem disk.

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The svchoast does not show 100% usage. Task manager shows 100% usage. Sorry if i mislead you.
I did what you asked and YES updater is running along with others.
Screen shots of Task man and Svchoast.
45800-Svchoast-1
45801-taskman-1

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Disable the Windows Update Service from services.msc and stop it, see if the CPU% drops.

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It appears to be badly wounded.
Task manager shows it trying to restart?
45802-WU-dead-1

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It shows *something* running, or trying to start, I can’t tell what that might be.

To get Vista updated (and, hopefully, curing the CPU/memory hogging behaviour for a month or so), you could try following the trail here: http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//177929-Vista-suffers-the-same-update-issue-as-Win7?p=1070103&viewfull=1#post1070103

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Windows update starts by itself in services.
I used the button “services” in the lower rt corner of the services page of task manager.
Windows update is set to restart automatic after 1 minute.
I changed it to manual.
Now Cpu runs @ 4-20%.

Thanks much.

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You may wish to consider this approach:

1. In Services (run services.msc or Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services), stop and disable both the Background Intelligent Transfer (BITS) and Windows Update services.

2. Copy/paste the following code into Notepad and save it to something like “WindowsUpdate.bat” on your desktop. (Make sure the new file ends in .bat, not .txt)

Code:

REM Start the Windows Update and Background Intelligent Transfer services

sc config wuauserv start= auto
sc config bits start= auto
net start wuauserv
net start bits

REM Now run Windows Update and wait

control /name Microsoft.WindowsUpdate
pause

REM When finished, stop the services and disable them

net stop wuauserv
net stop bits
sc config wuauserv start= disabled
sc config bits start= disabled

Now, if you ever want to check for Windows Updates, just right-click on the WindowsUpdate.bat file and choose Run as Administrator.

This will enable both services, start them then run Windows Update automatically. When you close Windows Update and press a key in the BAT file’s commandline window (where it prompts you to Press any key to continue…) the BAT file will continue, will stop the 2 services, disable them both again and close the commandline window automatically.

This will work for all later versions of Windows as well, although I’ve only ever used it personally (and successfully) with Windows 7 and 10.

Hope this helps…

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I recent learned three things:
1. How to make WU stop hogging the show.
2. How to make a batch file and run it from the desktop.
3. That, Science is still working. I don’t know it this is because of, or in spite of, Microsoft!

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One issue I’ve always wondered about is: It seems that every application I download has a file in it for every known language and dialect known/unknown to Wo/Man. Is it necessary to keep these on the system or can they be eliminated?

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One issue I’ve always wondered about is: It seems that every application I download has a file in it for every known language and dialect known/unknown to Wo/Man. Is it necessary to keep these on the system or can they be eliminated?

If they’re in a separate subfolder, compress the folder, it’ll save some disk space. You can probably remove the language files that you don’t need – but any update is likely to reinstall them again.

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One issue I’ve always wondered about is: It seems that every application I download has a file in it for every known language and dialect known/unknown to Wo/Man. Is it necessary to keep these on the system or can they be eliminated?

Most of the time, yes… you can delete them. (Note the qualifier “most of the time”. 🙂 )

I use a small, free, portable utility called DeleteNon-EnglishLanguageFiles to delete these files and reduce the size of system backups. It recurses through the HD and flags non-English files, e.g: ar-SA, bg-BG, cs-CZ, da-DK, de-DE, el-GR, es-ES, et-EE, fi-FI, fr-FR, he-IL, hr-HR, hu-HU, it-IT, ja-JP, ko-KR, lt-LT, lv-LV, nb-NO, nl-NL, pl-PL, pt-BR, pt-PT, ro-RO, ru-RU, sk-SK, sl-SI, sr-Latn-CS, sv-SE, th-TH, tr-TR, uk-UA, zh-CN, zh-HK, zh-TW

45829-suggested
Click to enlarge

It’s then up to you which language files you select and delete. Check out this webpage on DonationCoder, particularly post #6 for the download links. The author is Derek Souers and I also use his DelReadmeFiles utility – again, it’s small, free and portable.

Your profile doesn’t show where you live but, if you are deleting files/folders manually then – even if you live in the heart of the UK – I suggest that you do not delete en-US language files. Even when you have region, keyboard and locale set to English (United Kingdom), Windows is still very US-centric.

Touch wood, I haven’t had a problem yet.

Hope this helps…

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One issue I’ve always wondered about is: It seems that every application I download has a file in it for every known language and dialect known/unknown to Wo/Man. Is it necessary to keep these on the system or can they be eliminated?

Depends.
– Those files are – on average – not too large. So, why bother ?
– Try to find out which language file you need and delete the other ones.

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– Yep, the usual “Windows Update” problem. Try this guide (with emphasis on “try”) after you have started the Service celled “Wuauserv”:

http://www.tweaking.com/forums/index.php/topic,4799.0.html

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- Yep, the usual “Windows Update” problem. Try this guide (with emphasis on “try”) after you have started the Service celled “Wuauserv”:

http://www.tweaking.com/forums/index.php/topic,4799.0.html

One of my desktop PCs still has Vista SP2 on it (dual-boots w/ Win7) and by July was extremely slow checking for updates (10+ hours). In July I installed five updates that were then listed on the http://wu.krelay.de/en (KB3168965, KB3145739, KB3078601, KB3164033, and KB3109094) which helped, but Vista was still taking several hours to check for updates.

I looked at the tweaking.com page in your post and installed the two updates for Vista listed on the linked http://wu.krelay.de/en page (KB3191203 and KB3183431). After a restart I set WU checking for updates at 11:14AM and it finished checking at 11:39AM which is a considerable improvement.

And the wuauserv service seems to now be using much less memory.

EDIT: after installing the eight “important” and three of the four “optional” (I don’t want Skype on this system) updates listed and a restart WU finished “checking for updates” in less than a minute!

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Have you carried out any checks for overheating in case this is the cause (i.e. after 10-15 minutes)? Can you hear any fan activity?

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