CPU usage jumps to 50% for no reason

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Guest

Once or twice a week my CPU will start to overwork itself. The only thing I
can do is restart the computer to fix the problem. Task manager graph shows
both of my 550 MHz cpus at 50% but then I go into processes and nothing is
excessive - system idle process is around 96%. Kernel usage matches CPU
usage. I downloaded the shareware "Process Explorer" from sysinternals.com
and it did find that most of the usage was going into hardware interrupts,
and some to Deferred Procedure Calls. So I think I might be on the right
track, but I don't know how to single out and study a specific piece of
hardware, and I don't know how to kill/reset the hardware interrupts. Device
Manager shows that all my devices are working properly. It's an old HP
Visualize workstation with a gig of RAM and 2 small SCSI hard drives. Any
ideas would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks.
 
Check Event Viewer for errors.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| Once or twice a week my CPU will start to overwork itself. The only thing
I
| can do is restart the computer to fix the problem. Task manager graph
shows
| both of my 550 MHz cpus at 50% but then I go into processes and nothing is
| excessive - system idle process is around 96%. Kernel usage matches CPU
| usage. I downloaded the shareware "Process Explorer" from
sysinternals.com
| and it did find that most of the usage was going into hardware interrupts,
| and some to Deferred Procedure Calls. So I think I might be on the right
| track, but I don't know how to single out and study a specific piece of
| hardware, and I don't know how to kill/reset the hardware interrupts.
Device
| Manager shows that all my devices are working properly. It's an old HP
| Visualize workstation with a gig of RAM and 2 small SCSI hard drives. Any
| ideas would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks.
 
Thanks, I never knew about Event Viewer. I checked through the errors and
warnings and there were a bunch, some related to Symantec antivirus, some
related to microsoft.com's automatic updates. I thought that the automatic
updates might be the problem so i turned them off, but just recently my CPU
jumped up again. I kept track of when the "crash" took place and there were
no Event Viewer errors near that time.

So, I'm still at a loss... Any more ideas would be appreciated.

thanks,
Dylan
 
Task Manager|Processes and see what process is consuming the mem/cpu

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| Thanks, I never knew about Event Viewer. I checked through the errors and
| warnings and there were a bunch, some related to Symantec antivirus, some
| related to microsoft.com's automatic updates. I thought that the
automatic
| updates might be the problem so i turned them off, but just recently my
CPU
| jumped up again. I kept track of when the "crash" took place and there
were
| no Event Viewer errors near that time.
|
| So, I'm still at a loss... Any more ideas would be appreciated.
|
| thanks,
| Dylan
 
That's what I looked at initially. No process is using up CPU time. System
Idle process is ~96% but the CPU usage history graph constantly runs at
50-60%. . That's why I downloaded that other software which showed me that
hardware interrupts are the source of the constant usage. Please see my
first message. thanks.
 
The CPU column on the processes tab should indicate this. You might ask
specific questions here about tool use.

http://www.sysinternals.com/Forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=2

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| That's what I looked at initially. No process is using up CPU time.
System
| Idle process is ~96% but the CPU usage history graph constantly runs at
| 50-60%. . That's why I downloaded that other software which showed me
that
| hardware interrupts are the source of the constant usage. Please see my
| first message. thanks.
 
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