Wow, I guess that my case drowned here beneath the juicy side-track-debate
in this thread ;-)
Here's an update... Svchost.exe is another process that takes alot of
resources (I noticed after showing processes from all users).
Also, the Application log error disappears after rebooting the system. The
cpu actually settles down a little by that, but after a few hours the log
starts to gets filled again and the cpu is back at 100% once more.
What's happening here? I don't want these errors and I don't want my cpu to
be 100% busy with Windows processes...
What's happening is something is hogging your resources. If your
system is in good working order rarely should CPU usage stay about 30%
except for some random spikes. I have 84 processes running right now
and my CPU usage is hovering around 18%. If you're doing something
that puts an extreme load on your CPU like video editing, then CPU
usage will run much higher. For doing just normal stuff like web
surfing, word processing most graphic applications and the like you
should be able to maintain around 2/3 rds of your CPU in reserve...if
not, something is probably wrong and time to start hunting for what's
causing it.
Use Task Manager to help pin down what's going on. Go to the processes
tab, then click on the CPU column which will sort the processes in
order by what is using the most. If it comes up sorted least first,
just click again on the column header. Now you have an idea WHAT is
causing it.
Now that you have an idea WHAT is doing it, watch it by switching to
the performance tab. Click on Resource Monitor, then click on the
little arrow next to CPU usage and just watch for a few minutes.
Once here click on the threads column so whatever is using the most is
at the top, then alternate between the CPU usage columns. One or more
items will probably jump out from the rest. These are probably what
you want to focus on.
It's just common sense trying to guess what's happening. Just because
something is running a lot of threads doesn't mean something is wrong.
As an example right now on my system javaw.exe is using a lot of
threads. I'm not alarmed because I know why. I have my E-Trade account
open and using Market Trader which runs under Java that takes up some
resources to keep showing the ever changing stock prices, market
tickers, news wire, etc.. The other big hog is system, the NT kernel.
Again, expected. What you want to look for is something hogging
resources BIG time you don't expect to be hogging CPU cycles. That
likely is the problem application or service.