Processes "System" using lots of CPU

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by Antarctica, Sep 28, 2008.

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  1. Antarctica

    Antarctica Registered Member

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    Sometimes System processes will be using 60% of my CPU with peaks to 90-100% It's intermittent and it will also do it even if I am not using the
    computor.

    I have 2.00 GB of RAM. My setup is slim, I have DefenseWall, Kerio 2.1.5 and FD ISR

    Any idea what would be causing that? It was not doing that a couple of weeks ago.
     
  2. ThunderZ

    ThunderZ Registered Member

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    Just to be totally clear, we are talking about "System" and not"System Idle Process"? If it is "System Idle Process" then it is quit normal for it to appear that way in Task Manager. Though I have never found an explanation why. If it is "System" then there is a problem but would be hard pressed as to tell you just what it is. :doubt:
     
  3. farmerlee

    farmerlee Registered Member

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    I've had that issue a few times before, from my experiences it has something to do with defensewall as it only seems to occur when using my snapshot in which defensewall is installed. Unfortunately i haven't been able to pinpoint the exact cause, a simple reboot usually fixes the issue.
     
  4. Antarctica

    Antarctica Registered Member

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    Yes, I am talking about "System" ThunderZ.

    But maybe farmerlee is right, I will investigate on the side of DefenseWall. I have another Snapshot without DW and will see what happend when using it.

    Thanks
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2008
  5. starfish_001

    starfish_001 Registered Member

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  6. Antarctica

    Antarctica Registered Member

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  7. jonyjoe81

    jonyjoe81 Registered Member

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    Don't overlook hardware as a problem.

    On my dualcore amd 4800, all of a sudden my cpu was running at 100 percent load (both cores) with no major programs running except the normal antivirus/firewall which usually use less than 5 percent cpu, it was doing that for 3 weeks and I was unable to pinpoint the problem, no matter what program I disable or uninstalled. This high cpu usage problem just happened for no apparent reason and was at high cpu from startup to shutdown.

    On an unrelated problem my onboard audio was causing programs to crash, I decided to install a PCI soundcard. This fix the crashing problems and it also fix the cpu load problem. My cpu load went back down to less than 5 percent. It was something I would have never suspected that would be causing the high cpu problem.

    It's just something else to investigate.
     
  8. gottadoit

    gottadoit Security Expert

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    If you are feeling like digging into the problem you could use something like kernrate to see what threads inside the kernel are active and where they are spending their time

    A word of warning, the output will take some amount of reading (as it is text based and not a gui) and possibly a bit of speculation to narrow down the areas of interest

    The tool is described in several places, one of which is http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=45
     
  9. Antarctica

    Antarctica Registered Member

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    Thanks gottadoit for the information.:) I will take a look at the link you pointed out. I must say that lately (since a couple of days) I haven't notice this behavior anymore.
     
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