CPU bug in XP?

[Lifeblood]

I got me a dilemma. The thing is my CPU usage keeps hitting 100% randomly all the time and it's getting very frustrating having to reboot several times every hour. What could be causing this? It's not a virus or trojan since I've checked with all manner of antivirus and trojan removers and found zilch. I've been told SP1 is the culprit but there's no removal option for SP1 in add/remove. My system is patched to the hilt with all the newest patches so I guess it must be one of the 20+ hot"fixes" that's causing some kind of conflict. Task manager shows no process taking all this power either. Any ideas?

 

[bobgote]

what is SP1?

it is a program that is crashing. you should be able to spot which process is doing it by getting to task manager and clicking the performance tab, you should be able to spot the CPU hog. If you've already done this, post back some more info.

 

[Lifeblood]

Service Pack 1. Task manager don't display squat that would take up this much CPU power. It's like an invisible process that sucks the mojo out of das computer without warning at random intervals. I'd like to remove SP1 but I installed from the Microsoft site directly so there's no removal option in add/remove. I suspect removal of SP1 would help but I don't know how to do it.

 

[funxus]

I assume you clicked the CPU-column to show the ones taking most time on top, to see what process it is. Maybe you could increase update speed to high (to not miss it).

If they know SP1 is the cause, isn't there a patch to solve it?

Why do you have to reboot when it hits 100%? Is it because the computer becomes too slow? I know some programs (e.g. civ2) keeps CPU in task manager very close to 100%, but it still doesn't slow down the computer.

Reformatting is also an option, although I assume it's the last...

 

[Lifeblood]

Well, System Idle shows like 99% but that's got nothing to do with it. Rebooting doesn't help, I have to shut down and start the computer again to get back to normal. I have every patch for everything installed. The whole blaster virus thing made me start patching everything and now the patches broke the equilibrium of my computer. I guess I'll just wipe it tomorrow and put windows 2000 back in. XP blows hard anyway.

 

[Jeratain]

It's been asked, but hasn't been answered. What processes are you running?

 

[Lifeblood]

I don't see anything suspicious there.

 

[Jeratain]

Probably because you are running a skinning program. Visual effects on a 2D environment are worthless, just stick with what the OS has to offer. All those third party programs that skin Windows will only slow down your computer and have proven to be buggy all the time.

Anyways, if you're up for it, I recommend you reformat your computer, then do a fresh install of XP. Patch everything. Install only the programs and games you will use, and don't throw on worthless junk that will only clutter and slow down your computer by eating up ram.

 

[damunzy]

If you don't want to go through the process of reloading your system I would suggest that you deinstall one program at a time and see if that solves the 100% CPU problem. Or if that will take to long do a few programs at a time and see what happens. Each time you deinstall a program/group of programs reboot the computer so nothing memory resident is running.

Question: Is this your computer and yours alone or do you share it with someone?
Reason: Someone could have a spying program running on your computer that would explain the 100% CPU spike with nothing showing in the task manager. They could have it setup to take screen shots everyonce in a while. You can scope this out in the registry:
1) Run regedit from the command line
2) Go to: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CrruentVersion\Run
and/or
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Also look under ..\Runonce
!!Be careful when messing with the registry!!

BTW, like the username!

 

[Lifeblood]

Thanks for the tips but I couldn't resolve it. I removed StyleXp, all recent updates, patches and programs, tried different Catalyst Drivers and Sound Drivers, Mobo patched, changed the slot of the soundcard, changed the size of the paging file. Nothing helped so I ordered a better HD. From now on I'm dual booting win2000 and Xp.

 

[kcwong]

You really need to tell us which process is eating your CPU cycles before we can determine anything...

Sort the list on CPU and watch the list and the performance tray icon... see who eats your CPU cycles.

I've been using XP Pro for more than 1 year now... it works great for me. Windows itself haven't crashed even once - my games (potentially great but with bad programming ones - e.g. ToEE, Morrowind) are crashing though.

 

[sw99]

Just want to point out that skinning programs like Stylexp (which lifeblood was using) use no more resources than if you didn't use a skinning program at all. The reason for this is that they use windows xp's own gui interface/style (msstyles.dll).

Of course, you can disable it so that it just looks like windows 2000 and gain a small performance boost, but there are literally 1000's of different looks you can use for your gui, so why not if it doesn't use any more resources than the default blue/green scheme?

www.themexp.org has some really good ones.

BTW, whilst stylexp costs money, you can get around that by just downloading a hacked version of msstyles.dll which allows xp to use skins not certified by microsoft.

 

[nihilistic]

Are you sure you don't have any spyware or adware? Or programs like Kazaa and RealPlayer? Do you have too many "visual enhancements" installed? Also, are you able to characterize a typiccal situation where you will get these 100% cpu usage bottlenecks? Are there any patterns?

 

[Lifeblood]

Originally posted by nihilistic
Are you sure you don't have any spyware or adware? Or programs like Kazaa and RealPlayer? Do you have too many "visual enhancements" installed? Also, are you able to characterize a typiccal situation where you will get these 100% cpu usage bottlenecks? Are there any patterns?

I'm not a total noob. I know computers well enough not to install anything like that. Using well close to 20 different antivirus progs, ad removers and trojan removers I found nothing suspicious. If it's a trojan it's a damn good one.

The pattern was that there was not any discernible pattern. I could boot up the computer in the morning and it sometimes would go to 100% right away. It could happen 10 times an hour or once a day. I've reinstalled XP on a brand new Seagate Barracuda and so far it's running very stable. Last time I checked Seagate made quality Hard drives so I hope this works better than my last crappy budget Samsung. There's a documented problem with XP with the hardware making requests to the system all the time, hence putting the system into what Micro$oft refers to as an infinite loop error. I think the soundcard or vidcard hangs because of XP's fukked up nature. Also I think the fact that my vidcard and soundcard are considerably older than the rest of the system could have something to do with it too. I'm keeping tabs on everything I update and making it so that I can rollback to previous versions if it starts again. And of course installing a solid firewall. Microsoft can keep their hotfixes.

 

[kcwong]

I have a similar experience with my computer at work too... CPU at 100% for no reason, and go immediately to 100% after reboot.

That dropped my productivity to 0% at once... as I couldn't even browse a folder or open Task Manager.

So I booted it up again in Safe mode, and dropped unnecessary services and programs. Rebooted and it seems ok - CPU at 0%. Then I turned the services back on, one by one.

It turned out to be Mercury32 - a free SMTP server. I was using it in a project, and it had way too many mails stored in the queues and inboxes, slowing down my whole computer.

Perhaps you could check if you have anything similar?

Try using the Safe mode and see if it happens, turn non-necessary services to manual and start them up one by one.