100% CPU utilization "sticks": what causes? good or bad?

This is a "cobbler's kids" kind of thing.
I work on systems & networks.
I have two nearly-identical home/office systems, one my wife uses. Both are HP DC7600 desktops [love the box..] with 4GB RAM, 3.4ghz proc, fast hard drives, Win XP Pro. For the most part I keep them clean/tidy, but sometimes don't check hers for a few days. Her Father uses it also and he gets boatloads of FWD email....

So she's complaining about how slow her system is. I ignored for a few days, then snooped around a bit, didn't see anything unusual, but it was slow. Then it got slower. Then yesterday I got on it with NOTHING running except AVAST and whatever background noise, and it could hardly complete a command. Open Chrome... it would take a full minute to get alive. Opened MG fave CCleaner - I thought it had crashed... .took about three minutes to come up, and after that was too slow to use. lost patience and shut. So pulled up Task manager and sorted by CPU Utilization 'cause I could see right off it was pegged at 100%. I watched the stack of stuff for awhile, doing various common things. ANY applet or application one would choose would immediately cause a 100% processor utilization spike and it would just stay there, flat out 100% sometimes for several minutes. Anything and everything would create the condition. I saw nothing unusual in the pattern.... whatever the invoked process was would hit 60 or 70%, and the accompanying Windows system process would take the rest.

Scans, snoops, etc for malware, virus, etc turned up nothing.
So went to the startup services list and turned off darn near everything I could find, zapped a bunch of registry errors etc and rebooted.
Finally its looking almost normal again.

I have no idea, but I am suspicious of one common applet: Java Quick Start [jqs.exe] only because i would see it randomly spike when certain other things would be invoked, and I wondered why it was even necessary, so it got the axe.

Can someone 'learn me' on this topic:
1. In the good sense, like if your system was low on memory or the disk tired or whatever, what ordinary/normal things might cause an unbearable lot of 100% utilization?

2. In your experience, what malicious/ill-behaved/poorly-written junk living in the pile might cause such mischief?

3. Is there a MG-favored utility that will reveal the more "hidden" processes that ordinary Task Manager does NOT show? I know they are there, out of sight, but how to get a look at the rest of the things that are vying for resource?

thx
z

p.s. during my observation of all this, disk usage was never high, and memory utilization was never high... using about 2.5gb max...

 

When was the last GOOD defrag?
What all is on the Startup list?

 

registry defrag today.
disk shows no need for defrag, so none done.

I don't have a screen capture of the startup list, but its the usual software bunch: Avast virus, sound/audio applet [realtek], radeon gorp for the vid card, java, the unkillable Quicktime, printer bloat [part of which I cut off], and a string of microsoft system processes

 

Try downloading something like IOBit SmartDefrag and leave it running in the bakcground - it will defrag your drive on the fly so theoretically you never have to worry about it.

As for what is causing the problem, it could be anything at all. Personally, if the system is this bad, I would zap it all and reinstall from the ground up. This is worth doing occasionally (depends on system but at least yearly IMHO) anyway just to correct/prevent exactly the problems you are having.

 

I tested the drive with three different utils. it does not need defragging.
the system is not disk-thrashing. the routines that were spiking and "sticking" cpu to the ceiling were running out of ram [i should say running IN ram... the disk was showing virtually no activity at all.]

I cured it. I just am asking the questions of you smart guys: in general, WHAT causes CPU to lock-in at the ceiling, so busy it cannot get a breath?

still not sure what the cause was. nothing malicious, at least not in the common understanding of the term.

 

When I've seen this it is usually attributable to malware. However, other causes include software conflicts, such as running more than one antivirus, corrupted system files, programs looking for updates which may or may not exist, programs running scans, bad drivers. :wave:wave:wave

At idle, at the desktop, I look for the CPU to bounce around the 0 to maybe 5% level. Any higher and there is work to do.

 

agreed, brandy
unfortunately all sorts of things get to load "updaters" sight-unseen to the average user, and they accumulate.

which brings me back to the other question I asked and would love an answer to: What Utility can I get that will expose EVERY SINGLE task that is running at any point in time, no matter how hard the software--developer tries to hide/cover/obfuscate it???

 

Greetings, zapp...

I'll do some digging for the aforementioned utility (which would come in very handy!) - in the meantime, you can get a handle on what's going on with your system by checking the Services list (Start, Run, Services.msc) and by checking System Tools, System Information, Software Environment, Loaded Modules, etc...

 

Have you checked the event logs? It could be disk problems and you are seeing delays because the system can't get anything off of disk because its getting errors.

 

Winpatrol does a pretty good job at that. Explore all the tabs, click on "Show Hidden Processes under the startup tab.
http://majorgeeks.com/WinPatrol_d3380.html

Process manager is good too.http://majorgeeks.com/Bill2s_Process_Manager_d6071.html
:wave:wave

 

Try Process Explorer 12.01 I'm not sure if this is what you need but it does show which process calls up which. You might be able find the POS this way, with a good dose of patience. Oh, I can't guarantee that last bit you wrote. If it's a legit updater then you should be able to see it. Good luck.

 

You're right Augie, that was the one I was thinking of.
Zapp, please ignore the process management link. :wave

 

Yay. I'm going to kudo you
a real answer [2].
going to download now...