Task Manager Not Showing ...

... unusually high cpu activity during 'idle'. Is there an alternate that will tell me what is happening? I have the CPU Usage gadget that shows me cpu activity, temperatures, ram, etc. Typically when the computer is idle the graphs are low. On rare occasions the graph will peak and temps will rise dramatically for no reason. Being a novice, all I know is to fire up the task manager, go to Process tab, clik 'show all users' and look for a process that is showing mega numbers in the memory column and finding nothing 'out-of-the-ordinary' in this situation. The only way I have solved/'fixed' this is to shutdown and restart the computer. Perhaps this is not the way to troubleshoot this and there exists a more precise method?

-thx

Did you set Task Manager to show all processes?

UsernameIssues said:

Did you set Task Manager to show all processes?

mmm, yes ...

MourningStar said:

... Being a novice, all I know is to fire up the task manager, go to Process tab, clik 'show all users' and look for a process ...

My bad. I somehow thought that you were looking at the tab named Users (which will show all users that are logged on).

If Task Manager does not show the app(s) that are using the CPU, then I'm not sure what else to try.

Your replies (as well as the absence of input from others) lead me to conclude I am walking the correct path on this issue. I will more closely analyze the processes in the future. thx!

In other threads like this, I have suggested a scan with WDO because there are infections that can hide from Task Manager. However, the scans always come up clean... so, I was hesitant to suggest it again. If you opt to do that scan, use a USB flash drive and let the scan run overnight.

I have seen apps repeatedly start and exit so fast that Task Manager (and Process Explorer) never see them. I had to use Process Monitor to see them. But again, this seems most unlikely to be what is happening on your computer. Process Explorer can be set to a faster sample rate than Task Manager and Process Explorer can be set to highlight starting/ending tasks for several seconds - to give you time to see them. But again, Process Explorer can still miss items that don't run long enough :-(

UsernameIssues said:

... this seems most unlikely to be what is happening on your computer. ...

agree 100%, -thx.

UsernameIssues said:

If Task Manager does not show the app(s) that are using the CPU, then I'm not sure what else to try.

OK - I think I discovered the culprit. There is a process (actually there are a whole lot of them) labeled svchost.exe. I have no idea what these are. I 'ended' the one using the largest amount of memory and the cpu activity dropped almoat immediately. I typically hate to do things w/o knowing what I'm doing so I usually create a restore point first. Anyways, have not noticed any problems. Anyone know what is going on here?

-thx

Each svchost process is hosting various services.

To see which services are being hosted by one of the svchost processes...
...right click on the svchost process of interest
...select Go to Service(s) from the context menu
That should take you to the tab named Services and some services should be selected/highlighted. (Sort the services by the PID column for easy viewing.)

The culprit is probably the Windows Update service (wuauserv).

You can install the latest Windows Update Client (KB3135445) and see if that helps.

If you still have the problem, try the steps in option three of this tut:
Windows Update - Reset