High cpu usage when the system is idle

I do have a high cpu usage problem when the system is idle. I bought the laptop (lenovo x230 tablet) with windows 7 installed in it. Then upgraded to windows 8. But ever since I have problems with high cpu usage by the system even when the computer is idle.
Only the system by itself uses around 30% of the cpu all the time. I ran xperf, and here is the result of it:
http://sdrv.ms/Kj6CFN
I appreciate any help you can provide.
Thanks,

Hi,
I'm sorry for that the log you provide can't be opened on my computer. While according to your description, it should had a special process that consume CPU usage when system idle Iguess, isn't it?
You can use
Process Explorer to monitor the process activity, may be we can find the reason of this problem.
Note: We can use Process Explorer to check the Stack of every process then analyize the problem in deep.
To gave a better insight about this problem, you can take a ScreenShot for this problem and provide the picture here.
Roger Lu
TechNet Community Support

Similar Messages

High CPU Usage when Idle

Hello Crew!!!
I have been using a ThinkPad Z60t, running the OS WinXP Pro that came bundled with the Thinkvantage Software. I have had no problems with my computer for the two years I have been using it. I use it as much if not more then a traditional desktop, covering all aspects of my life, from business to gaming (although it is not a gaming comp, it does me fine). Recently, within the last week or so, I noticed a huge lag-like spike every minute or less, including when the system is idle and isn't playing anything. I ran McAfee as well as AdAware and found no issues out of the ordinary. After reading a few forumn posts, on other websites, I ran a processes check, with Microsoft based software "Sysinternals" and found that over 50-80% of my processor was being used by Deffered Procedure Calls (DPC's) and Hardware interrupts. I chose to reinitialize my entire system, back to factory settings, wiped it all. Guess what it is still doing it!!!!
I have completely updated my OS, and other forumns suggest that there is a hardware issue, or intermittent signal with the CPU or Motherboard, what can I do to test this theory or to find solutions, please help me!!!!!

ron App wrote:
bMaNoNe wrote:
...but considering it's normal it's ok I guess.
It is not "normal" and cannot be "normal". Programmers like that must be fired immediately.
It's like iTunes - scroll cover flow fast enough, and you can get memory usage up to 1GB (!!?) which is even not fully returned after you stop scrolling.
And those people are making jokes about Windows? Yes, it is ugly but when they have blunders like this, at least they correct them. Just returned from the shop, wanted to buy 27" iMac. 3.06GHz model was running Parallels with Vista, processor usage continuously like 3-5%. iMac was cooking - if I put my face 0.5m from the screen, I could feel the heat!
I don't know about iTunes... some of the recent Mac apps (Safari, iTunes) are so slow/inefficient I stay away from them. However, Logic's CPU use when idle is completely normal for a "real time" application that starts approx 20 threads minimum. All DAW application do this to some extent, some more than Logic.
What's not normal is how much heat the new Macbook, MBP and iMacs are generating, the folks over on the Macbook forums are starting to see heat related failures.
As a side note, Windows 7 is much more efficient than Windows XP_Professional, that's saying something as XP is a good real time DAW OS. After Vista I didn't expect much but Win_7 is a nice OS.
pancenter-

High CPU usage when graphics card is put at work

I have a 13inch Air with 2GB RAM and 256GB with Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. All possible updates have been installed.
I noticed some tearing when trying to move program windows across the screen so I started checking the CPU usage. I saw that it is spiking to 25-35% when moving a window across the screen.When you drag down a window you can see the different copies of the top bar across the screen. Not smooth at all like on a standard PC windows system. Same issue when scrolling through webpages which spikes the cpu
I also noticed a high cpu usage when playing mkv files 25-30% while on an Atom HTPC i get a lower load playing the same file. The Air should be faster than an atom with a nvidia 9400m when playing video files.
I already tried updating the nvidia files to the latest version on their site by hacking the driver inf but this did not resolve the issue.
Has anyone experienced the same or know what could be causing the beavior?
Many thanks

Maybe my initial post was not clear so let me add some clarifications.
I have the problem with Aero disabled
I have the problem on the Apple site which does not have any flash content.
I have already hacked the lastest nvidia drivers to get them on my system which did not change anything. Can you provide a link to some other 'supported' beta drivers?
I am using the new 13 inch air so it has the newer graphics card so I would expect it to be faster than an old HTPC with a 9400m in it. I wasn't stating that my Air had a 9400m.
It would be great if someone you also do the test to check the cpu load:
- when playing a 720 mkv
- when dragging a window across the screen
Just open task manager and see if the CPU spikes.
Many thanks!

[SOLVED] qemu-kvm high cpu usage when using pulseaudio alsa-plugin

My Arch system is configured to use pulseaudio. When an application connects to the sound server it will use either a native pulseaudio driver, or the pulseaudio alsa-plugin if it using a alsa driver.
qemu-kvm in 'extra' is not compiled with native pulseaudio support. When running guests with sound hardware support, qemu-kvm connects to the sound server using the pulseaudio alsa-plugin.
The problem I'm seeing is high cpu usage on the Arch host even though cpu usage on the guest is low. Also, the guest is often unresponsive for a period of time when opening sound applications like the mixer or playing audio.
My solution is to recompile qemu-kvm with native pulseaudio support. This eliminates the use of the pulseaudio alsa-plugin on the Arch host and fixes the above problems.
An easy was to do this is run:
yaourt -S qemu-kvm --build
And edit the PKGBUILD changing the line:
--audio-drv-list=alsa,sdl,oss,esd \
To:
--audio-drv-list=pa,alsa,sdl,oss,esd \
Finish building and install. Don't forget to add yourself to the kvm group.
Last edited by bytesize (2010-08-16 02:34:08)

Problem disappeared.
I'm not sure, but i think installing xf86-video-modesetting helped to fix this issue.
I had an error messages in /var/log/Xorg.0.log like this:
(EE) Failed to load module "modesetting" (module does not exist, 0)

High CPU usage when updating or instlling s/w

When updating Win8 or installing MS Office system slows down and has to run all night to make any progress. Task Manager shows "System" using 49%. "go to process" shows "NT Kernel & System". The system was bought with Win7 and is now double booting both 7 & 8. Win 8 partition has 500 GB.
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hello @Dan-44,
Welcome to the HP Forums, I hope you enjoy your experience! To help you get the most out of the HP Forums I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide First Time Here? Learn How to Post and More.
I have read your post on how your computer is displaying a high CPU usage when installing updates or other software. I would be happy to assist you in this matter!
What other programs are in use when these updates take place? How full is your computer's Local Disk hard drive? In the meantime, I recommend following the steps in this document on Resolving Slow System Performance (Windows 8). This should help improve the speed and efficiency of your operating system.
Please re-post with the results of your troubleshooting, as well as the requested information above. I look forward to your reply!
Regards
MechPilot
I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution ” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click the “Kudos, Thumbs Up" on the right to say “Thanks” for helping!

Google Earth Plugin and LabVIEW: High CPU usage when adding placemarks

Hi,
I posted this question on stackoverflow earlier this week but feel it might be better suited to the LabVIEW community specifically so I'm reposting here:
I'm writing an application which uses the Google Earth Plugin to display events on the globe. Each event is a single point kml placemark with an icon which is a 3kb png file. Placemarks are uploaded to the plugin as they are received by the software. I am experiencing increasing CPU usage with the number of placemarks that are added.
I have tested displaying a new placemark every second and running until the software running the plugin completely froze (graph attached). The GEPlugin (green trace) stopped responding (i.e. the globe did not respond to the mouse) at around 1200 placemarks added and CPU usage was at ~30%. When the software itself (red trace) froze the plugin was using around 50% CPU and ~3700 placemarks had been added). After the freeze, no new placemarks were added which caused the software to respond (but not the plugin) so I could clear all the placemarks. After the placemarks were cleared from the globe, the CPU usage of the plugin returned to around 5% CPU.
So what I've seen is that GEPlugin CPU usage increases linearly with each kml placemark added. Is this the expected behaviour/ a normal limitation of the plugin? If not is there a more efficient way of adding many placemarks to the globe?
I am using GEPlugin version 7.1.1.1580 (API version 1.010) and LabVIEW 12.0f3
Please see the test results attached. Any input greatly appreciated!
Original stackoverflow post:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20994323/google-earth-plugin-with-labview-high-cpu-usage-when-add...
Attachments:
Performance Log 020114_095115.png ‏82 KB

Hello,
I have had a look at your graphs and understood what you are trying to do. To me it seems that as the image gets more complex it gets harde to render which wold likely cause increase in CPU usage resulting in the freeze. I would suggest you try running the program on anoher computer to check on the RAM front of things. If this is a limitation of the GE Plugin then unfortunately I can not do much to help, but if you think this is a problem coming from your LabVIEW code then you can post your code here and I can take a look.

High CPU usage when downloading Files

Hi there,
i noticed somethign strage when I download file off the internet or intranet. As soon as my download speed surpasses 1MB/s the CPU usage increases. To be exact the process kernel_task.
For example:
2,5 MB/s -> ~30%
10 MB/s -> ~60-70%
10+ MB/s -> ~80%
This is really annoying and I have now clue how to fix this. The Harddrive is a SAMSUNG HM320JI with a Journaled HFS+ partition. No Virus Scanner or anything. Also just reinstalled Snow Leopard yesterday.
Hope someone can give me some useful information how to fix this.

Hiya,
could it have something to do with the write speed/ cache/ram? On a "slow" disk, or one that is nearly full or one that is partitioned, it will take a great deal more ram and cache to "digest" the faster download and write it onto disk. I tend to do downloads to a separate drive. Have you got one? and can you repeat the high CPU usage when downloading / saving to the external drive? I note your drive might have 5,400 rpm, with "just" 8mB cache and 320 GB (quite a few SATA's have 7,200 rpm and 32 mB cache).
NB: If anything, I found SL more efficient, especially on my 4 year old Macbook, which is running much faster and has got more responsive after installation of (full version of) SL.
Message was edited by: Alexandre

ITunes 10.6 has High CPU Usage when switched to Mini Player

iTunes has high CPU usage when switched to mini player. The CPU usage goes to 80-100% when the next song is played in Mini Player. iTunes then stays at high CPU usage.
Upon exiting mini player the CPU usage will drop back to the normal 0-5% levels.
This only happens when playing from the main music library; which my library is at 7089 items, 42.04 GB.
When playing from a smaller playlist such as a smart playlist with about 15 songs in it for example, the CPU usage stays low/normal.

Do you have any better luck with that if you update to iTunes 10.6.1.7?
From the notes for the release:
iTunes 10.6.1 provides a number of improvements, including:
• Fixes several issues that may cause iTunes to unexpectedly quit while playing videos, changing artwork size in Grid view and syncing photos to devices.
• Addresses an issue where some iTunes interface elements are incorrectly described by VoiceOver and WindowEyes.
• Fixes a problem where iTunes may become unresponsive while syncing iPod nano or iPod shuffle.
• Resolves an ordering problem while browsing TV episodes in your iTunes library on Apple TV.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

High CPU usage when downloading from ITunes Match

When attempting to download matched songs from ITunes Match, ITunes utilization spikes to over 70% and makes it almost impossible to do any other function on the computer. Eventually ITunes fails to respond. I have tried several remedies including reseting winsock. Is there any other options I should try?

Hiya,
could it have something to do with the write speed/ cache/ram? On a "slow" disk, or one that is nearly full or one that is partitioned, it will take a great deal more ram and cache to "digest" the faster download and write it onto disk. I tend to do downloads to a separate drive. Have you got one? and can you repeat the high CPU usage when downloading / saving to the external drive? I note your drive might have 5,400 rpm, with "just" 8mB cache and 320 GB (quite a few SATA's have 7,200 rpm and 32 mB cache).
NB: If anything, I found SL more efficient, especially on my 4 year old Macbook, which is running much faster and has got more responsive after installation of (full version of) SL.
Message was edited by: Alexandre

High CPU usage when editing large MXML files

I am using Flash Builder 4.5 Plug-in on OSX. When I have a large MXML file open, Eclipse will consume 100% of the CPU as long as that file is open, even if I am not doing anything. If I close that editor the CPU usage goes back down. I've seen this in Flash Builder standalone as well as the plugin. Is there a workaround to stop this CPU usage problem?
Thanks

Hiya,
could it have something to do with the write speed/ cache/ram? On a "slow" disk, or one that is nearly full or one that is partitioned, it will take a great deal more ram and cache to "digest" the faster download and write it onto disk. I tend to do downloads to a separate drive. Have you got one? and can you repeat the high CPU usage when downloading / saving to the external drive? I note your drive might have 5,400 rpm, with "just" 8mB cache and 320 GB (quite a few SATA's have 7,200 rpm and 32 mB cache).
NB: If anything, I found SL more efficient, especially on my 4 year old Macbook, which is running much faster and has got more responsive after installation of (full version of) SL.
Message was edited by: Alexandre

Continual HD activity, high CPU usage when idle

I got my first notebook, a Compaq V2000, a few weeks ago and have Arch set up pretty well on it but I have a few issues. Even when the machine is sitting idle it sounds like the HD is doing a read (or whatever) about every 5 seconds. This only starts after I log into Gnome and stops if I log out.
I tried a couple of things with hdparm:
If I try 'hdparm -y /dev/hda' the drive goes to standby but immediately spins up again.
'hdparm -B 255 /dev/hda' disables APM and stops the cyclic behavior. This would seem to be good but during the 5 second cycle the drive alternates between quiet and noisy and this leaves it in the noisy state.
I tried to determine what might be causing all this disk activity so I edited lilo.conf to remove "acpi=on apm=off" from the "append=" line and in rc.conf I put a ! in front of all modules and daemons and rebooted. I removed the applets from task bar. No change.
I ran top to see if I could tell what was accessing the HD but I'm not knowledgable enough to make much sense of it. I did notice that on my notebook the top summary shows:
CPU: ~30% user, ~10% system, ~60% idle with 'wait' bouncing between 0 and 5%
On my main computer, also running Arch/Gnome, I get
CPU: ~2% user, ~1% system, ~97% idle with 'wait' solid at 0%
On the notebook, if I run hdparm -B 255 /dev/hda the CPU #'s for user and system remain high but the wait # drops to zero and stays there.
I don't think all this HD activity could be good for my machine, and I know I find it very annoying. If anyone could help me stop all the HD accesses and understand the high CPU usage I would appreciate it.

I loaded lsof and frankly it scared me. It listed what looked like a couple hundred files and I didn't know exactly how to use that information.
Then I tried laptop-mode-tools. The man pages didn't sound too promising since it uses, among other things, hdparm, which I already tried with mixed results. I gave it a try anyway and right out of the box, with no configuration, it worked. HD access when idle dropped to essentially none, the drive spins down and the cooling fan runs much less frequently.
So far all I have changed in the config file are the HD idle timeouts. The default of 5 seconds was starting and stopping the HD too often so I changed that to 20 seconds for now.
Whatever laptop-mode did to stop the 5-second HD accesses the effect persists even if I run 'laptop_mode stop' and '/etc/rc.d/laptop-mode stop'. When I get the time I should be able to use 'laptop_mode status' and laptop-mode.conf settings to determine exactly what the magic bullet was.
Thanks, lucke. I never would have tried laptop-mode on my own because I thought it only duplicated functionality that I already had with hdparm and powernowd.

High cpu usage when idle / x230

Hi all,
I have an i5 x230, win8 pro installed on a crucial m4 msata ssd, 16gb of ram. I lately noticed a sharp drop in battery life. I believe this is due by high cpu utilization when idle, which I see from task manager, and shows the System process hovering above 30% cpu utilization. This goes down when I restart, but comes up again after a while, possibly when coming back from sleep.
Does anyone have any idea about this? I tried to search the knowledge base a bit, but nothing came up.
Thanks!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Indeed it was risdxc64.sys; I used process explorer to find out. I uninstalled the win 8 driver, and installed back the win 7 driver, and CPU usage is normalized.
Thanks for pointing in the right direction!

Since 10.4.6 Update: "ATSServer" with high CPU-usage when opening PDFs

Since I've updated to 10.4.6 my system is very slow when I open PDFs (in "Preview" or "Acrobat").
This is caused by the process "ATSServer" which goes through every file in "~/Library/Fonts" (I have over 4.800 files there - but just a view are activated by "FontBook") and so it takes very high CPU-usage.
I didn't have this problem bevore the update and I didn't make any changes on my font settings.
I've cleaned the font cache, but it doesn't help.
Any ideas?
Ciao
Mephizo
PS: Excuse my poor English.
PowerBook G4 17'' 1.67 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)
PowerBook G4 17'' 1.67 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I haven't noticed any change myself, Dan, but I have the 2 GHz model.
One thing I HAVE noticed though after OS updates is that they can often result in a fair amount of file and free space fragmentation immediately after installation. OSX's routines will deal with fragmentation of small files , but not of large ones (over 20 Meg), and it won't deal very effectively with free space fragmentation. If your HD is getting full this can cause significant slowdowns, especially where video is involved.
You should also run DiskUtility and check for any directory and permissions issues.
Cheers
Rod

Kernel_task high cpu usage when using external monitor at 1080p

Specs
Model Name:          MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:          MacBookPro6,2
Processor Name:          Intel Core i7
Processor Speed:          2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache (per core):          256 KB
L3 Cache:          4 MB
Memory:          4 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed:          4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version:          MBP61.0057.B0C
SMC Version (system):          1.58f15
My external display is a Samsung PX2370 connected to my MBP using an HDMI cable with a HDMI-to-miniDP adapter
I first noticed this after the last EFI update several months back. At first I thought kernel_task eats up too much cpu cycles whenever an external display is attached, but it turns out this only happens when the external display is set to 1080p. When external display is set to 720p, kernel_task is pretty much normal (~5% cpu usage) but rises up to ~150% cpu usage once the external display is set to 1080p.
kernel_task cpu usage is also with normal range when my MBP is connected to a Samsung LCD TV at 720p.
Anyone having the same problem or know of any fix/workarounds?

Seems like the problem persists when playing a 720p video on the external display set to 720p. To sum it up
Video Resolution
Main Display
External (1280x720)
External (1920x1080)
480p
ok
fluctuating kernel_task cpu usage (~5 to ~150 cpu usage)
high kernel_task cpu usage
720p
ok
high kernel_task cpu usage
high kernel_task cpu usage
1080p
ok
high kernel_task cpu usage
high kernel_task cpu usage

High cpu usage when moving application windows

Hello all,
I have two machines with arch installed:
- an eeepc 701 surf/intel gpu(xorg driver) with xfce
- an amd 3800+ X2/nvidia 8860 gt(proprietary driver) with kdemod3(also checked with xfce4)/arch amd64 installed.
I noticed that when i move a window of an application(for example konsole, etc..) too fast i get high cpu usage(30-40 %), when checking with htop.
Is it normal that the X server uses the cpu so much when moving a window??
EDIT: up to now i tested it in a friends windows machine, and it happens exactly the same, so i guess is normal. It seems i need to be informed better about how X works :-)
Last edited by mechmg93 (2008-10-15 08:04:10)

today i switced back my desktop system to debian unstable and tried to see what the difference is concerning this problem.
I found out that in kde3 the solution to the "problem" is debians kde default configuration about window behaviour.
Especially the one mentioned below :
In debian this is not ticked and this has as a result zero cpu usage when windows are moved.
Last edited by mechmg93 (2008-10-23 18:36:58)

High cpu usage when the system is idle

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