High CPU Usage Problem XP SP2

[kanagala]

Hi folks,,

i am using windows xp sp2 on my Intel P4 2.4 Ghz , 512 Mb DDR system.
Recently i am facing high CPU usage problem ,CPU usage is going upto 100%, i havent even installed large applications.


Can anybody suggest me how to controll this..

Please find the attachment screenshot of task manager

 

[tnl2k7]

Hi,

That picture's useless, we can't see all the running processes. Send us another one but with all the processes on it.

-Luke.

 

[TechAsh]

To see what's using the most CPU time, click on the 'CPU' column header in the Task Manager. You will probably need to click it twice to get it in the right order. Then post that screenshot and we be able to see what's using all your CPU time.

 

[javajenius]

Hi folks,,

i am using windows xp sp2 on my Intel P4 2.4 Ghz , 512 Mb DDR system.
Recently i am facing high CPU usage problem ,CPU usage is going upto 100%, i havent even installed large applications.

Can anybody suggest me how to controll this..
Please find the attachment screenshot of task manager

Re-install windows. -joking

It looks like you have a lot of processes (41) running, but from the image we really cant see that much. Do what TechAsh said and post a picture of the CPU column.

For small problems - restart.
For big problems - re-install.

 

[shaunak]

Mcafree seems to be the culprit:

I found this post:

This process ran my CPU at 100% and stopped me from even using my computer. While it may be important to keep this program going it is more important to have my computer work. I am switching to another anti-virus as this product is useless to me at this time.
-Bobway

And this one:

MCShield (Anti)Virus - Has Same Effects On CPU as Most Spyware - Uninstall it and replace it with another anti-virus scanner See also: Link
-Jan Brandy

And this one:

mshield.exe often freezes the whole system. after killing this process the pc continues working fine.

And this one:

Every Saturday afternoon, it effectively renders my pc useless by needlessly taking up 75-90% of cpu. After this subsciption is over, I will NEVER purchase another McAfee product.

And one more:

I did a chat session with McAfee support after having a problem with mcshield hogging all my cpu time for extended periods of time. The guy had me clear out all of my junk files. I don't know if this will really do anything yet. Maybe I should remove all of my programs, clear out all of my files, and stop surfing the internet. Maybe then mcshield will be happy.
-Matt

Source: http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/mcshield.exe.html


My suggestion, use avast.

 

[TechAsh]

Looking at the bottom of your screen shot, I've just noticed this: "CPU Usage: 2%".
So is this only a temperamental problem (i.e. Does it come and go?)

I would say that your system is running ok, only 312mb out of 1248mb of RAM is being used, and not much CPU.

 

[Spartan Erik]

I don't see a high usage problem.. and every time you open the task manager it jumps to 100 but then goes down to its actual usage

 

[Zangetsu]

rule #1 never install Mcafee on a computer that has less then 1GB, why ?, well that should be obvious it has to many processes and uses a lot of resources get NOD32 instead

and what is svchost.exe ?

long answer:
svchost.exe is a system process belonging to the Microsoft Windows Operating System which handles processes executed from DLLs. This program is important for the stable and secure running of your computer and should not be terminated.

short answer:
This program is important for the stable and secure running of your computer

and we all have it and no you cant get rid of it (unless you wanna ruin your OS)

and the only process that "hogs" your CPU is system idle process

what is system idle process ?

long answer:
In Windows NT operating systems, the System Idle Process is a kernel thread, which runs when no other runnable thread can be scheduled on a CPU. For example, there may be no runnable thread in the system, or all runnable threads are already running on a different CPU.

short answer:
the System Idle Process is a kernel thread, which runs when no other runnable thread can be scheduled on a CPU.

 

[kanagala]

Thank you all,

I have uninstalled mcafee and installed avast ,System is somewhat cool now...

But still i am facing CPU usage problem sometimes perticularly while using windows media player.


I am going to install VMWARE with two guest OS

Can any body explain me
Is cpu usage is similar to RAM usage?

If i add more RAM my will my system performance increase so thati can use my VM well?

 

[Zangetsu]

Thank you all,

I have uninstalled mcafee and installed avast ,System is somewhat cool now...

But still i am facing CPU usage problem sometimes perticularly while using windows media player.

i had that problem to media player is just doing some background searching or if you are playing a movie

Can any body explain me
Is cpu usage is similar to RAM usage?

nope it is not Central Processing Unit (CPU), or sometimes just called processor, is a description of a class of logic machines that can execute computer programs, Ram is a type of computer data storage. Today it takes the form of integrated circuits that allow the stored data to be accessed in any order, i.e. at random. The word random thus refers to the fact that any piece of data can be returned in a constant time, regardless of its physical location and whether or not it is related to the previous piece of data.

If i add more RAM my will my system performance increase so thati can use my VM well?

it should improve the performance if you add another gig or two

 

[Smith6612]

Sounds like you have the svchost.exe problem on your system, where for about 10 minutes or so it will cause your system to be almost completely unusable. Microsoft a few months ago had released a new version of Automatic Updates, which had a bug in it that used an excessive amount of RAM and CPU just for checking and installing updates. That has since been fixed by now. This only seems to be happening still on a few computers, as Microsoft released two patches for this problem a few months ago. My computers weren't affected, but unfortunately for one of my relatives whose computers I was updating, I ended up spending an extra hour there not for downloading, which only took a minute, but because svchost.exe was running at 100% usage whenever I tried searching for updates. They said that their computer also wasn't running too good at first when the svchost.exe process did the same thing, so I tried installing the two patches Microsoft released, that didn't help, so I had to kill the problem at the source, by shutting the Automatic Updates service off in Administrative Tools. Since I'm there a lot, I can take care of their computers and keep them updated since I pretty much prevented the service from even running anymore. So really, the only fixes I can think of is:

1: Rebuild the svchost.exe service for Automatic Updates
2: Try patching it
3: Going into control panel> Adminstrative Tools > Services and finding Automatic Updates and setting the service to run manually (note by doing this you are ultimately turning off Automatic Updates. If you wish to check your updates on http://update.microsoft.com, you will need to set this back to Automatic).
4: If you wished to be hastled with it, every boot before the CPU usage occurs, go into Control Panel > Adminstrative Tools > Services and quickly shut down the Automatic Updates service.
5: Just wait it out whenever it decides to do that.

Otherwise, that's just everything else. In all seriousness, disable the service if patching it doesn't work, but note that you will not get updates automatically anymore, so you'll need to visit the Microsoft website the day after Patch Tuesday (second Tuesday of each month) to get those updates after re-enabling the service. This is not a very common problem that is happening anymore since Microsoft released a fix, and really only affected Windows XP. Windows 2000 and Vista surprisingly weren't bugged up over this.

 

[bigjoe4]

I got winXP and 256RAM and my PC is plenty fast

 

[Zangetsu]

thats probably cuz you dont have much stuff on the hardrive