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Thread ID: 128489 2012-12-23 00:20:00 what is using my processor? Vince (406) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1319843 2012-12-23 00:20:00 something is using my processor continuously by any amount from 30% to 100%.
It is causing the cursor to stick & jump and sounds are broken.
How can I find out what is causing this?
Vince (406)
1319844 2012-12-23 00:32:00 Right click your task bar, select task manager, on the processes tab click the CPU heading to sort by CPU usage. That'll show you what's using it and you can go from there. dugimodo (138)
1319845 2012-12-23 01:16:00 Task manager is good in most cases but sometimes it won't tell you all the details. For more information I would recommend "Process Explorer" by Sysinternals. Agent_24 (57)
1319846 2012-12-23 02:53:00 And check that your antivirus isn't doing a system scan in the background. Paul.Cov (425)
1319847 2012-12-23 03:21:00 Task manager doesn't account for the unusual activity. In fact it only tells of 10 to 15%, at most. Vince (406)
1319848 2012-12-23 03:29:00 If the CPU supports speedstep, disable it in the BIOS Speedy Gonzales (78)
1319849 2012-12-23 03:54:00 Process Explorer says that by far the largest user of the processor is "interrupts". In excess of 20%.
I don't know what that means. Or rather, what does that mean?
Vince (406)
1319850 2012-12-23 04:47:00 Process Explorer says that by far the largest user of the processor is "interrupts". In excess of 20%.
I don't know what that means. Or rather, what does that mean?

Could be you have some faulty or misconfigured hardware or driver issue (which may also include driver parts of system-level software like Antivirus). Not sure if this is also a symptom of the HDD going into PIO mode or not.

For the record, I did have a PC with a faulty audio card that caused random CPU usage spikes. In process explorer it showed up as the DPC "process" (deferred procedure calls).

But Hopefully someone else has more experience with this kind of thing
Agent_24 (57)
1319851 2012-12-23 06:19:00 If task manager says 10-15% what are you using that tells you it's 30-100% ?
Try it in safe mode and see if that runs better. If so it might be a matter of disabling or uninstalling software one by one until things settle down. Of course it could be a hardware issue as Agent mentions.
dugimodo (138)
1319852 2012-12-23 09:57:00 If task manager says 10-15% what are you using that tells you it's 30-100% ?

Chachemanxp has a system tray icon that can, among other things, display processor usage and free RAM. It also has some useful settings and tweaks.
Vince (406)
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