Winlogin processor usage spiking

[Alex Thalmann]

Hi all

I have a Winlogon-based eXP image which is giving hassles. Basically,
the first time the machine is booted to the login screen, the CPU
usage spikes exactly every 60 seconds. This is on a Via Eden 400Mhz
system, and the spiking can be so bad (100% greater than 1 second) as
to drop a couple of seconds worth of performance logged data. I've
confirmed it is the winlogon process that is causing the spiking
through performance monitor itself. However, if I log onto the system
the spiking goes away, and stays away, even if I log off again. I've
tried searching for '60' second intervals in the registry, and come up
empty. I've also tried fiddling with a number of Winlogon registry
keys, in order to see if it has something to do with an obscure
setting, to avail. I've scoured the event logs and they don't show
anything unusual, as far as I can tell, related to winlogon, userenv
or any other (potentially random) service.

Anyone have some insight/things to try? Maybe someone can verify on
their image that they have the same CPU spiking thing going on, on
first boot.

 

[Jon Fincher]

(e-mail address removed) (Alex Thalmann) wrote in

Hi all

I have a Winlogon-based eXP image which is giving hassles. Basically,
the first time the machine is booted to the login screen, the CPU
usage spikes exactly every 60 seconds.

Anyone have some insight/things to try? Maybe someone can verify on
their image that they have the same CPU spiking thing going on, on
first boot.

My first guess is registry activity, writing data to the drive. The
perf hit may be due to poor disk performance.

I would do some monitoring using RegMon and FileMon, trying to correlate
the times of the perf hits to activity seen the logs those tools
produce.