CPU Usage

[ngagne]

Here's the deal:

HP Omnibook laptop
650MHz Celeron/128MB RAM

System was loaded with 2k about three weeks ago (damn viruses), and it was working fine. I used the system at home this weekend, and nothing was abnormal. When I came into work this morning and booted, I noticed that the system process was using 99% of the CPU time (graph was pegged). Rebooted several times, did not fix.

The problem does not happen when system is is safe mode. I noticed a post about CPU usage on a 266mhz system while running Norton AV, I have Norton installed but this is a much faster machine. I've tried stopping processes and services to see if usage goes down, also stopped Norton from loading on boot. Nothing helps.

If anyone can help me out on this, it would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Nate

 

[techshoot]

What process is eating the cycles? Go to the Task Manager (Right Click on Task Bar or &quot;<Ctrl-Alt-Del> and select Task Manager). Look under processes and you could even sort by CPU. A Likely canidate is the spooler.exe which you could shutdown and then restart from the Administrative Tools|Services to see if it does it again.

http://www.ktech-usa.com

 

[ngagne]

It's the &quot;system&quot; process.

 

[techshoot]

MS KB Q295714 goes into what to do, it is basically a matter of a system service is hanging up and they have a proceedure for dealing with this that I listed below. However, if it is taking a great deal of CPU time this may be a bit tedious. I would try going into safe mode and then disabling system processes in the control panel|Services (careful as to what ones, none that will be listed as &quot;Started&quot; while in safe mode) then reboot to normal to see if it stopped it in order to narrow down the problem. Both methods can be tedious, so take your pick.


How to Break Down the System Process

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The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

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SUMMARY
This article describes how to break down the System process when you are monitoring the computer's performance.



MORE INFORMATION
When you are monitoring the computer's performance to determine the cause of a bottleneck, or to determine why the computer stopped responding (hangs), the monitoring results may reveal that the System process consumes a large amount of processor time. This issue is usually caused by a device driver that is running in the context of the System process. To break down the System process, use the procedure that is described in this section.

NOTE: If you restart the computer during this procedure, the results are not valid.

Start performance monitoring by selecting the Thread object, %Processor Time counter, and only the instances of the System process.


Note the threads that are using large amounts of processor time.


Click the System process in the Process window, and then use the Process Viewer tool (Pviewer.exe) to examine the parent process for the thread.

NOTE: Process Viewer is located in the Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit or on the Windows 2000 Support Tools CD-ROM.


In the Thread window, click the thread number that corresponds to the thread that you identified in step two.


Note the start address in Process Viewer.


At the command prompt, run the Process and Thread Status tool (Pstat.exe) to view the running processes and the loaded module list.

NOTE: Process and Thread Status is located in the Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit and in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit.


Compare the thread start address to the loaded module list.


Identify the location of the thread against the module list.

Usually, this location is a device driver.


Contact the vendor of the device driver for additional support.

http://www.ktech-usa.com

 

[ngagne]

Thanks for the reply, but the KB article is specifically for Server versions - I'm on Pro. I tried starting and stopping processes, but that did not work either.

Nate

 

[techshoot]

Did you try the pstat command? You could redirect the output to a file to make it easier to read. Try pstat > stat.txt and the output will go to a text file called stat.txt in the folder you run the command from.

http://www.ktech-usa.com

 

[Jroenick]

Try disconnectiong any USB devices you have, or any preipherals at all, the system process can be hanging up on hardware with a bad driver. Let me know

 

[ngagne]

All I have is a USB mouse. The laptop only has 1 PS2 port which I use for my KB. Will try pstat command, have to find correct disk.

 

[techshoot]

pstat should be available from the command prompt. I would also double check the disabling of services. Go to Safe Mode and check what services are running and write them down. Then go to standard boot and stop the services that were not running in safe mode but are set as system services.

http://www.ktech-usa.com

 

[ngagne]

Found the pstat.exe, I dumped the output to a text file as suggested. If I could e-mail someone that file for them to look at, it would be appreciated. My e-mail is ngagne@numa-inc.com.

Thanks,
Nate