CPU use 100%

[Ket]

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop running Windows Vista (I know, I know). The other day it was running at CPU use 100%. I scanned for viruses, malware, spyware, etc., and found nothing. It is not running hot. I ran a Google search on the problem, but evidently my google-fu sucks because I couldn't find any information posted after 2008. So I just turned it off and left it alone for the night. The past couple of days it has been running just fine. Then today, its running at 100% again. It doesn't just peak there for a minute or two then drop back to normal use, it stays that way for hours.

I have no clue what to do next, save taking it in to a professional. And I'd like to avoid that if possible. I have finals coming up and there are just some things I need my laptop for because I'm incapable of doing them on my tablet. Anyone have any ideas as to what may be causing this problem?

[jouzinka]

If you restart the computer, does the 100% usage continue? Sounds like a software problem...

[Oniya]

If you pull up your Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and look under the Processes tab, you should be able to sort by Memory Usage (click twice slowly on the 'Mem Usage' column).  That should tell you which program is hogging your resources.

[Ket]

If you restart the computer, does the 100% usage continue? Sounds like a software problem...

Currently, yes.

If you pull up your Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and look under the Processes tab, you should be able to sort by Memory Usage (click twice slowly on the 'Mem Usage' column).  That should tell you which program is hogging your resources.

Nothing is using an insane amount of memory. I'm talking 3 times less than what Firefox hogs when its running. I was going to open up the task manager and g Google each process to see exactly what it was, but now I can't even do that because I'm stuck on the screen and its saying please wait.

Edit: in normal mode, after pressing ctrl+alt+del, it says "logon process has failed to create the security options dialog." I Google that, and still could not find recent information. I did look through older (2008) info, and everyone had a different solution to the same exact problem. When I pull up the resour ce monitor in safe mode (uszsaage still at 100%) NT Kernal & System is using 100% of CPU. I Google that as well, and again received hundreds of different answers from 3 or 4 years ago, ranging from it being a virus to the system not restoring properly from being in sleep mode.

I have no idea what to do.

[Vekseid]

Did you add a peripheral of any sort lately?

[Izu]

I used to get 100% CPU after I dropped my old laptop on the ground and the harddrive got a bit broken (after that I was running it with an external drive), so if you can't find a software reason I'd go to a tech support for a check up. Something somewhere might have broken up or loosen up and the machine just doesn't know how to handle it.

[Lady Quixote]

Other things to try would be to make sure your drivers are up to date, as well as windows updates.  What were you doing when it would peg itself out at 100%?

Also I would look to see when you virus scanner is running, those are known to eat up a lot of CPU.

If you put your pc into sleep/hibernate often, it very well could be something related to that.  (http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f299/solved-high-cpu-usage-after-resuming-from-sleep-461383.html)

Vista and Windows 7 are similar enough that you could look through some formus for Windows 7 information and see if they pertain to your case.

Hope this helps.
Matt

[Artairus Dent]

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop running Windows Vista (I know, I know). The other day it was running at CPU use 100%. I scanned for viruses, malware, spyware, etc., and found nothing. It is not running hot. I ran a Google search on the problem, but evidently my google-fu sucks because I couldn't find any information posted after 2008. So I just turned it off and left it alone for the night. The past couple of days it has been running just fine. Then today, its running at 100% again. It doesn't just peak there for a minute or two then drop back to normal use, it stays that way for hours.

I have no clue what to do next, save taking it in to a professional. And I'd like to avoid that if possible. I have finals coming up and there are just some things I need my laptop for because I'm incapable of doing them on my tablet. Anyone have any ideas as to what may be causing this problem?

Some quick ideas.

If you are using Chrome, I've been seeing a lot of memory leaks.  Each new tab and Window is a new occurrence and they will stay open even after you've closed Chrome (meaning, you can go to tasks instead of applications and see chrome~.exe in there.

I would definitely run malwarebytes after a reboot.

I would also check what's going on with svchost.exe.  Could be an infection issue there.

[Rinzler]

Also I would look to see when you virus scanner is running, those are known to eat up a lot of CPU.

+1

Definitely check this. Whenever I find one of my CPU cores going full hog, it's because the scheduled scan has kicked in. It'd be worth checking your virus scanner to see if it's set to a regular scanning schedule - and if so, that it coincides with when your CPU is maxing. Though my scanner (AVG) displays a little pop-up box to tell me when the scheduled scan has started, it's quite an easy thing to miss.

[Ket]

Did you add a peripheral of any sort lately?

Nope. 

Other things to try would be to make sure your drivers are up to date, as well as windows updates.  What were you doing when it would peg itself out at 100%?

Also I would look to see when you virus scanner is running, those are known to eat up a lot of CPU.

Everything is up to date, and I wasn't doing anything. I was incapable of doing anything. Well, at least not without waiting 15-20 minutes for the program to start only to have it not respond all the time. I manually run all the scanners, so it doesn't bother me when I don't want it to.

Some quick ideas.

If you are using Chrome, I've been seeing a lot of memory leaks.  Each new tab and Window is a new occurrence and they will stay open even after you've closed Chrome (meaning, you can go to tasks instead of applications and see chrome~.exe in there.

I would definitely run malwarebytes after a reboot.

I would also check what's going on with svchost.exe.  Could be an infection issue there.

I use Firefox. It does the same thing. I checked svchost.exe and all it's millions of babies.  They all seem to be legit.

I thought I had it fixed at one point, but it only lasted a few hours.  I'm working on a bit over 24 hours of up time right now, with no issues as of yet. The first thing I did was Computer>C drive Properties>Tools>Error-checking>Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.  (found that information from a Microsoft forum by a poster who says he's a microsoft support engineer) Anyway, did that.

Worked for a few hours, then I had my problem all over again. So I went back into safe mode, ran all the scans again, turned off some extraneous crap that I didn't need at start up and restarted.  So far, things seem to be going okay.

If it does it again, I'm just going to give up the ghost and take it to a pro.

Thanks for all of your help!