Mysteriously High CPU Usage

[novacthall]

I've discovered a problem with my home computer that I've run out of ideas on in terms of troubleshooting. I've had success getting solid advice in the past from the AT forums, which is my hope for this topic.

First off, the specs:
AMD Athlon64 3500+
2GB RAM
ABIT AV8 Socket 939 Mobo
PowerColor X1950Pro AGP GPU 256MB
Windows XP Professional
AVG Free Anti-virus (haven't used Norton in years)

In early March, my company moved me from Tennessee to South Carolina. Typically, I take the task of packing all of my delicate electronics myself, since I frankly don't trust the Neanderthals that moving companies generally contract out to pack you out (nothing against them, nice people really, but not the brightest bulbs in the knife drawer - case-in-point: the guy boxing up the office kept calling my subwoofer an "Xbox" because it had an Xbox window-suction-cup-thingie resting on top of it). This time, however, my time was very short and I could not pack up any of the computers in their styrofoam. I assured myself that I was more than likely neurotic and that everything would be fine when the shipment arrived in South Carolina.

Here's what I know: when I powered off my computer for the last time in Tennessee, everything worked excellently. Practically as well as the first day I unboxed my computer, because I'm very careful about what I put on the system. When I unpacked in South Carolina, however, XP boots slower than usual, and game performance is downright abysmal. Whereas before (using World of Warcraft as a benchmark) I could expect 60.0 FPS in Ironforge and mid-range 30 FPS in Outland, I was now getting 20 (max) and a pitiful 8 (again, max), respectively. The only thing that's different is the time zone! (I've even got cable internet here that's three times faster than what I had in Tennessee.)

I began trying to find the problem, thinking it was a system quirk. Lo and behold, task manager routinely reports CPU consumption on the Windows desktop on a fresh boot at between 60 and 70%. That's outrageous! Opening up anything, Start Menu, IE/Firefox, or My Computer is all it takes to completely peg the meter.

Here's the real kicker, though: System Idle Process is still reporting 90%-plus on the desktop, even though the CPU indicator is bouncing in the high quarter. I have positively no clue what would cause the discrepancy, and I would discount it were it not for the fact that I'm clearly taking a performance hit as a result. I have not been into Safe Mode yet to see if the problem is evident here (this thought only just occurred to me).

Fragmentation on the drive is minimal and a boot-up Scandisk scan revealed nothing useful. I'm clear on viruses and on spyware/malware/Kelly Clarkson. Is it possible that this could be hardware-related, and if so, what has to be jiggled on the motherboard to cause high CPU cycling and inaccurate system idle process reporting?

I've never experienced anything like this. I'm comfortable formatting the machine, but I typically like to reserve that as a last-ditch effort to save the poor computer from my own technical ineptitude. Any and all advice is appreciated.

 

[Genx87]

Make sure you click the box to show process's from other users.

Then I would try to find a process explorer. I believe sysinternals or microsoft has one. It will allow you to view all process's running ect.

 

[Netopia]

Excellent advice.

Let us know what you find.

Joe

 

[novacthall]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Make sure you click the box to show process's from other users.

Then I would try to find a process explorer. I believe sysinternals or microsoft has one. It will allow you to view all process's running ect.

Thanks for the pointers, Genx87. I will try them out on my computer when I get home (it's Friday... maybe I can sneak out a bit early...).

I have some questions, though.

On processes from other users, if I'm logged on as my main account, but not admin, and have no other users logged on in the background, would other processes still spawn? Nevertheless, I will check the box.

As for the process explorer, I found this gem:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx

I gotta be honest with you - I haven't been this excited to get home and boot up a system utility in years. My inner IT guy is all giddy with excitement. Why don't they bundle that with Windows instead of the (almost frustratingly useless) Task Manager?

 

[lxskllr]

Check your temps for the cpu if you can. The heatsink may have come loose and high temps are causing the problem. I had that happen with a laptop of mine. The heatpipe quit transferring to the sink , high temps would make the cpu spike, and the computer would be almost unusable.

 

[Genx87]

If the process is granted permission to start as a service, then yes they can start even if that user is not logged in.

 

[Matthias99]

You might also check that your hard drive hasn't been kicked back into non-DMA mode, which is both horrifically slow and eats up a lot of CPU time whenever a program or the OS accesses the disk. If your HDD or the IDE/SATA cable was damaged in transit, it may be causing occasional disk errors -- the OS will retry until it works, but after enough of them you'll drop out of the high-speed DMA transfer mode to try to increase reliability.

On a long-distance move like that, I personally would have taken the hard drives out and packed and carried them myself. Everything else can be replaced...

 

[Puffnstuff]

After you recheck your hardware you might want to run a spyware scan. It is possible that a malicious program is eating up your cpu time.

 

[SGT Lindy]

Set your Autoupdate service to disable and re-boot.

Since Feb there has been a major problem with XP and auto update causing high CPU. Most people that have the problem are using WSUS but lots are not.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/12009443/m/786004271831/p/1

Or just google svchost.exe high CPU.

Try it and see what happens.

 

[novacthall]

Okay, here's where I am now...

CPU temperatures: I found a new little freeware gem called SpeedFan that tells me my ran rotations and my internal temperatures. I'm showing high 40s to low 50s (°C), which I believe under normal circumstances, that is a truly idle CPU, would be more than enough reason for alarm. However, given that I appear to be under medium to medium-high load, I think this is acceptable. However, I have not monitored my CPU temperatures before today, so I could be wrong.

Other processes: I did not know that. I've checked the box in Task Manager and no new processes appear. It's good to know for the future, though, so thanks for the tip.

DMA goodness: I looked for DMA settings in the device's properties in Hardware Manager, but could not find any toggles. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place?

Oh, and lesson learned about hard drive transport. I will not be making that mistake again.

Spyware: Scans are showing negative, but it never hurts to check. My most recent scan also came up clean.

Auto-update: I've noticed it's been kind of wonky lately. Disabled and restarted, but no change.

I've got some new theories.

Process Explorer is showing the breakdown of my System Idle Process and the results are interesting. Task Manager, it appears, reports the SIP as a single item, even though there are subgroups within it that can cause CPU load. Hardware Interrupts, surprisingly enough, are causing between 60 and 80 percent processor load, consistently. An interesting correlation, indeed. As I understand it, interrupts should not be a constant thing on a healthy system, so I delved a little deeper into this.

Looking at the interrupt properties did not yield anything useful, save a very angry-looking jagged graph of my consumed CPU cycles. It had no threads or strings associated with it, so I turned to the system Event Viewer, and that's where I found my latest red flag.

It would seem that on startup, my video card is failing an HDCP handshake (and so it seems that HDCP does me more harm than good...), causing the Catalyst suite to load incompletely. I am unsure if this could be the cause of the problem, but here's what I've got.

I'm running Catalyst 7.1. I see that in the time of my move, we are now up to 7.3. I think it may be time to update.

I will write again to report my findings. Also, any input in the mean time is appreciated. Heartfelt thanks to everyone who has contributed thus far.

 

[mechBgon]

Just checking... you have firewall protection such as a router, and Windows is fully patched-up, right? Cable Internet = cesspool.

 

[novacthall]

Yep, I'm walled and patched to the nines.

Video card driver update didn't fix anything. Changing the DVI cable to a different input on the back of the GPU (last-ditch effort) didn't do the trick, either.

I'm officially out of ideas. If you're all fresh out of ideas, too, I'm anticipating a format. I'm building my backup now, just in case.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: novacthall
DMA goodness: I looked for DMA settings in the device's properties in Hardware Manager, but could not find any toggles. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place?

It's actually under the controller settings -- you can't set it per drive, only per controller, or sometimes by channel if the controller supports it. If, for instance, you have two IDE drives as master/slave on one channel, or multiple SCSI devices in a chain, they have to run the same DMA mode.

The controllers are usually in Device Manager under "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers", not under "Disk Drives". The "Advanced Properties" panel should have the DMA settings.

 

[novacthall]

I eventually did manage to find it (though only after I realized I was being a cotton-headed ninny muggins) and all my controllers are running in DMA mode.

 

[novacthall]

Okay, update time, and this time around it's grim.

While I was transferring my backup to my fiance's computer, I did still more digging to see what could be the cause of hardware interrupts. As I mentioned before, I tried updating the graphics card drivers, with no luck. I also just updated my Sound Blaster drivers, knowing that the root of most hardware conflicts are sound cards, but again I struck out.

Now that I was really really out of ideas, I decided to go along with the format. When I bought my computer three years ago, it came with an image CD/DVD that would put me back at square one, as it was the day it left the factory. On boot, the computer asked me to confirm that I really wanted to go ahead with the format, to which I agreed. The Symantec Ghost screen pops up, holds for a second or two, and then the top eighth or so of the screen corrupts, with the Ghost going no further. My patience is not rewarded.

Thinking the boot CD was corrupted, I also happened to have another Ghost image booter (created by the same people, but for a different system), which I tried to boot. I was greeted with the same corruption.

So now it would seem I'm out of ideas and up a creek. Are these the death throws of my motherboard?

/cry

 

[mechBgon]

So now it would seem I'm out of ideas and up a creek. Are these the death throws of my motherboard?

It's speeled "throes" but whatever How about try the HDD diagnostic tests for your HDD next? I've got links to some of them at the bottom of this page.

 

[novacthall]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

So now it would seem I'm out of ideas and up a creek. Are these the death throws of my motherboard?

It's speeled "throes" but whatever How about try the HDD diagnostic tests for your HDD next? I've got links to some of them at the bottom of this page.

While we're being English teachers, it's spelled "spelled". However, given that your typo is more than likely a finger spasm and mine more than likely some sort of cerebral hemorrhaging, I'll give you the point.

I downloaded and installed both of the Western Digital utilities to test my drive. Starting with the quick test, I would get practically a half-second in before it told me that it had failed the cable test ("Cable Test::Read diagnostics sector error!"). Western Digital's website suggests that this is a 219 error: "Failure during cable test. The cable is loose, broken, or not plugged in. Recheck your connections and replace the cable. Retest the drive."

Is this suggesting that if I hunt down another SATA cable and plug it in that my problem may be fixed?

 

[mechBgon]

Yeah, try a different SATA cable, since (1) it's quick and cheap to try as a fact-finding step, and (2) it jives somewhat with the fact that the system got packed and physically moved.

"Speeled" is the irony-fortified version of "spelled" that we sometimes use when pointing out speeling errars Don't mind me, I'm just being pedantic

 

[novacthall]

I found a spare SATA cable lying around and slammed it in. No dice, sadly. Just for grins, I plugged the cable into the SATA2 slot on my mobo, but I'm still faced with the same errors. I've still got awfully high CPU draw.

I have a feeling I know what that means, but since I'm not exactly batting 1.000 today (or yesterday, for that matter), I'd rather hear you say it.

 

[mechBgon]

As another fact-finding step, what about dredging up a spare HDD, slapping that in there, and trying to install Windows onto that drive? Do you have any spares you could do that with? It would only take about 15 minutes to see if it's going to work or not.

 

[novacthall]

I do not, unfortunately. Are you trying to determine whether it's the HDD or the motherboard?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: novacthall
I do not, unfortunately. Are you trying to determine whether it's the HDD or the motherboard?

Yeah.

 

[novacthall]

Right. I'm without any additional hard drives. Is there any way I can test the motherboard to ensure it's working properly?

I appreciate your advice, your help, and your patience, mechBgon.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: novacthall
Right. I'm without any additional hard drives. Is there any way I can test the motherboard to ensure it's working properly?

One option would be to hitch up your HDD to some other motherboard and try to run the HDD diagnostics on that other motherboard. If it works on the other one, where it wasn't working on yours, then that might indicate a motherboard problem.

My speculation is that the system got jarred or flexed enough to pop some small surface-mounted bits off the motherboard, or at least crack their soldered connections.

 

[novacthall]

That's my speculation as well. Even without being able to differentially diagnose the hard drive as the root cause, I think I'll go ahead and claim the computer as "broken" to the moving company and see what happens.

Truth be told, though, I'm not crazy about the idea of getting a new computer, especially if they have to whisk this one away. This is my baby we're talking about, here!