Windows 7: CPU Usage Woes, and Heat Issues too

Hello everyone, I've been running Windows 7 on my machine (See System Specs) for about a year and a half now, and I notice that for the past few months, my CPU usage tends to hang between 50 and 100% when idle or running 1 to 3 very light applications (e.g. Mozilla Thunderbird, Google Chrome, VZAccess Manager). On top of this, my system cooling is not the best in the world, so heat is also a major issue.



All comments appreciated,
Chris

Open Task Manager while at idle, go to Processes tab to see what is running your CPU so heavy.
As for the heat, laptops run hot anyway but what temp are you at @idle & @load?
Make sure it has enough air flow around the fan(s) and the exhaust panels. Flip it over and check for dust build-up (you may need to remove some panels to clean it out).

While at idle, task manager uses the most CPU (40-65%) out of 2.0 Ghz (x 2 cores). As for dust, the inside is spotless. I havent a clue about temperature, but it is hot enough to be a cause of concern. It is about the same temp at idle and at load, and it is most commonly used on a desk away from obstructing clutter.

Can you open Task Manager go to Processes tab then open the window to Max size and post a screenshot using "Snipping Tool" so we can see what else is taxing the cpu? As for temps you could install and run "CoreTemp" to check what your running at. Is your cpu fan running hard at all times? You could be running hot because of your cpu running 50%+ all the time. I have read a few reviews about your model of laptop and all said it ran on the hot side, so you also might want to check out a cooling pad for it.

Surprisingly, after running Task Manager for about 10 minutes, CPU usage by its process decreases dramatically. The fan does run full out all the time. Attached is a snip of processes at idle, process while running applications that I would have running most of the time, and Core Temp. Hope it works for you.

I dont really see any weird things going on in your pics of task manager, Resource Monitor might give a little more detail ... Start orb>searchbox>resmon.exe

High cpu usage without user initiated processes would mean you've likely got a ton of startup items. Click on the Start orb, type msconfig, hit Enter. In the msconfig window, click on startup tab and uncheck anything you dont need to start automatically. E.g. on my computers, only the AV, touchpad driver and password manager are checked.

You also might want to check out why there are so many "Google Chrome.exe" running at once. In your "at load" pic were you running Java? If not check that out.

While we are looking at things you might want to check you "power plan settings"
Power Plan Settings - Change

Edit:
wysebrowser.exe excessive CPU utilization

Its an old thread but might be something to look into

I would say that you have too many background processes running on your machine.

I have 99%+ idle on mine, and that is while browsing ... see attached picture.

It doesn't seem to tell much more, other than how many threads I have.

This will probably help the most. I went from 16 to 5 startup processes.

Most likely, this has to do with the fact that Google Chrome sandboxes different parts of the browser, thus reducing crashes.

Yes, I was running a java-based piece of software. West Point Bridge Designer to be specific.

They've already been tweaked to my liking.

I forgot about that one entirely! I never use wyse anymore, and have disabled it in startup tasks.

I'll let you know how it works out over the next few days.

In addition to turning off everything except AV and gadgets in Startup, check back to see if anything writes itself back in after several reboots and turn it off in Program Preferences or uninstall.

Next in msconfig>Services choose "Hide all MS Services" to see what runs without your knowledge. Uncheck it and after reboots if necessary turn it off in its preferences or Uninstall.

This gives you a clean boot without freeloaders which slow startup, leech CPU/RAM and can spy on you. Google updater is worst.

Hope some of it helped, keep us posted on how it goes.