"system" consumes 95-100% cpu?

[geekyguy]

Hi All: I have an XP Pro sp3 desktop with 1 gig RAM and a 30-gig hard drive.
The computer started to run very slowly and I saw that it only had 5% of the
hard disk space available. I deleted a lot of files and ran a defrag on the
drive freeing up ~40% of the space.

After rebooting, and viewing Task Manager, CPU is pegged at 100% with
"system" (user "SYSTEM") taking up all available CPU. It's not bad enough to
prevent other apps from starting/running (they're running slowly, however),
but after 20 minutes "system" is still consuming 96-99% of CPU.

I've googled (and bing'd) around for awhile, but most often the culprit is
print spooler, or indexer, or svchost...but in this case it's the "system"
image itself hogging CPU...is there anything that would cause that to
happen?

McAfee is installed but McShield is only consuming a small portion of CPU.
No other apps seem to be fighting for CPU either.

Any ideas?

 

[Unknown]

In task manage is there any application running? Did you wait to see if
system eventually stops? (taking cpu time)

 

[geekyguy]

In task manage is there any application running? Did you wait to see if
system eventually stops? (taking cpu time)

There are no applications running, just processes, and "system" is still
consuming all available CPU (~90-99%). "System" is only using 212K of
memory...that doesn't change.

 

[RMD]

Hi All: I have an XP Pro sp3 desktop with 1 gig RAM and a 30-gig hard drive.
The computer started to run very slowly and I saw that it only had 5% of the
hard disk space available. I deleted a lot of files and ran a defrag on the
drive freeing up ~40% of the space.

After rebooting, and viewing Task Manager, CPU is pegged at 100% with
"system" (user "SYSTEM") taking up all available CPU. It's not bad enough to
prevent other apps from starting/running (they're running slowly, however),
but after 20 minutes "system" is still consuming 96-99% of CPU.

I've googled (and bing'd) around for awhile, but most often the culprit is
print spooler, or indexer, or svchost...but in this case it's the "system"
image itself hogging CPU...is there anything that would cause that to
happen?

McAfee is installed but McShield is only consuming a small portion of CPU.
No other apps seem to be fighting for CPU either.

Any ideas?

Install the free "Process Explorer", (Google for it), which will give
you much more detail as to what is using your resources.

I found it was Deferred Procedure Calls generated by a USB wi-fi
device which was using the system resources on one of my machines.

Ross

 

[Gerry]

What is the Image Path of the Process generating excessive CPU activity?
Right click on the Process, select Properties and click on the Image tab
to get this information.

Download Process Explorer.
For further information about Process Explorer see here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/ProcessExplorer.mspx


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[geekyguy]

Thanks Ross: I'll do that and start a new thread if I can't fix the problem.