Odd CPU utilization

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-06-20 11:05pm

It's been jumping around at 50-70 when just idling at the desktop, so I checked the temp. Fine, 43c idle, 47c under heavy loads. So then I get some compressed air and blast the fuck outta the heatsink, fans, etc. Still the same. So I safeboot to check it out. Huh, still running at 50-70 percent, when there's only the barebones shit running.
Okay, let's try a game, say, San Andreas. Absolutely no lag whatsoever, everything is snapping along great. Tried 6 other games, no problems. Am I just getting some sort of display error? (I checked CPU utilization in Everest along with the task manager.)

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-06-20 11:51pm

What process is using the CPU?

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-06-21 01:30am

Uraniun235 wrote:What process is using the CPU?

Uh, nothing. 99 percent in System Idle.

And it appears to go away after playing a game, and only comes back after I restart. Odd.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-06-21 01:40am

So... wait, you're saying that your system shows 50% CPU utilization, at the same time showing that System Idle is at 99% (indicating that the CPU is not being utilized at all)?

I'm confused. Maybe you could take a screenshot or two of Task Manager so we have a better idea of what's going on?

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-06-21 02:19am

Uraniun235 wrote:So... wait, you're saying that your system shows 50% CPU utilization, at the same time showing that System Idle is at 99% (indicating that the CPU is not being utilized at all)?

I'm confused. Maybe you could take a screenshot or two of Task Manager so we have a better idea of what's going on?

Yes, thats exactly whats going on. Absolutely nothing is using that cpu power, but there it is.

Ghetto edit: spelling

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-06-21 04:48am

Captain tycho wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:What process is using the CPU?
Uh, nothing. 99 percent in System Idle. And it appears to go away after playing a game, and only comes back after I restart. Odd.

Okey, in the preformance tab, while its on 99% idle, is it still showing CPU usage above 0? A in the green line being somewhere above 0%.

If not, could be just a weird bug.

Melchior · Post by **Melchior** » 2005-06-21 04:53am

Do you have already checked for spyware and viruses?
Anyway a screenshoot of the task manager could be helpful.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-06-21 05:54pm

Melchior wrote:Do you have already checked for spyware and viruses?
Anyway a screenshoot of the task manager could be helpful.

24 percent CPU usage in this screenie, since it fluctuates wildly at times, but you get the gist of it.

Performance tab, a few seconds later:

Melchior · Post by **Melchior** » 2005-06-21 06:41pm

There is something weird going on. taskmgr.exe should be at about 01, instead it is at 0.
Check for viruses, since you don't seem to have any strange process running (but with a malfunctioning task manager you can't be sure...).

The Third Man · Post by **The Third Man** » 2005-06-21 07:46pm

Try using Process Explorer from http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/P ... lorer.html - this will give you a bit more detail than task manager does. Check what it shows under system idle processes.

I'd suggest this might perhaps be some piece of hardware creating excessive interrupts.

Nathrak · Post by **Nathrak** » 2005-06-21 08:41pm

Don't think this will help with your problem, but I was getting spikes of 60-80% cpu usage every 93 seconds and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. In Taskmanager it just was under System - System but Process Manager let me go into that and see every thread. Turns out it was the parport.sys (parallel port driver) doing it, so I unplugged the printer cable that I never use and it stopped. Now, I actually could tell in games like Diablo 2 and KOTOR when it would happen, very bad pausing/stuttering but with other games, it seemed to stop doing it while they ran.

Anyway, it doesn't seem like that is your problem (my displayed numbers matched up) but this is a hearty cheer for Process Explorer!

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-06-21 09:41pm

In the preformance tab, "View" -> and tick "Show Kernel times".

The red is is how much time is spent doing OS "stuff" and not your application stuff.