CPU usage in idle

[bokiboss]

Hello,
I have question regarding CPU usage when my laptop has not have any application up and running (at least not by my request).
I have changed some of the Start Up in msconfig. Everything that I don't really need on immediate Windows start up I have not selected. That is fine.
But still absolutely randomly I will have my CPU usage going up and down from 1% to sometimes over 40% if not even more. Recently what has happened is that I left task Manager up (only, nothing else) in order to monitor CPU usage. While I was watching CPU usage was as I would say normal. 0%-7% up and down. After let say 45 minutes I got back to check again. I log on and much to my surprise I have noticed that my CPU usage in last, at least 10 minutes was constantly around 40%-50%. Strangely enough few second after I log on CPU usage has dropped down to the previous percentage.
I am talking over here about Acer 5378Z
4GB RAM
T4300 Dual Core
WD320GB 5400
Intel Graph (up to 1.8GB share memory)
Windows 7 x64 Home Premium (with latest updates)

Do you have any idea what it could be?
I also scanned computer against viruses and malware. All clear.

 

[GEWB]

Hello bokiboss -

Do you have indexing enabled? Do you have antivirus program running a deep scan during idle times? Have you looking into the scheduler to see what gets triggered during idle time?

Regards,
GEWB

 

[bokiboss]

Thanks GEWB,

I am not sure about Anti-Virus. I will double check.
But I will definitely check Scheduler.
Also I believe I have disabled Indexing long time ago but now I am not sure whether I did only on my old laptop.
Thank you very much. I will come back with some results soon as I check this settings.

 

[logicearth]

Is this causing an actual problem?

 

[karlsnooks]

bokiboss,
rb: | TASKSCHD.MSC | ENTER

The initial screen will give you a good idea of what tasks are scheduled on your computer.

By clicking on Task Schedule Library (left-hand pane) you will get more info on the scheduled tasks.


If you have no problems, then remember the words of the ancient philosoppher: Thou shalt sweat it not.

 

[legacy7955]

@bokiboss:

Are you using MSE Security Essentials from MS?

Which version ...v1 or v2?


Open your taskbar and look for the process called MsMpEng.exe.

It should read "0% cpu" . Now do not touch anything on the computer and x out of all programs so that nothing on the desktop is running except for the MSE and the taskbar. Wait a minute or so....do you see the MsMpEng.exe program spool up and use lots of CPU? I bet you do.

This the the MSE realtime protection scanner. It is designed to only operate when you idle your PC (if you stop using it but it is running for AT LEAST ONE MINUTE!)


I have been trying to find a way to customize this to my liking but the one way I thought you could did not work, it would always automatically revert to the default as designed by MSE.

Anyone have suggestions?

 

[karlsnooks]

Legacy,
MSE is purposely designed to not interfere.

MSE is the least intrusive AV you can get.

High CPU usage is not due to MSE.

don't fix problems which don't exist.

If you are curious about what processes are doing what then there is resmon.exe and also procmon from the sysinternals folk.

 

[legacy7955]

@Karl:


It is causing the high CPU with my PC, I have kept track of it and consistently the CPU is spiking between the mid 20s and 99% when the PC is idle!

Also I noticed that if you are watching a video MsMpEng.exe WILL start to function on my PC causing the video to freeze up.

For the record this was NOT a problem with v1 at all. No old Security suites on this PC either. Only when I downloaded v2 (kb2544035) did I start having problems with this.

Also I looked in the event viewer and noticed that following the install of kb2544035) v2 I noticed that I have a couple of "MpSampleSubmission" errors ID event 5000 and 5001. Never had this until I installed v2.

 

[karlsnooks]

legacy,

Your problems are not due to the MSE version.

As a starter run sfc /scannow
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

Carry out following:
LIST OF STARTUP AND INSTALLED PROGRAMS USING CCLEANER


STARTUP PROGRAMS
CCleaner | Tools icon | Startup button | click on Save to text file button (bottom right side)

Using the PAPER CLIP icon in the top panel of a Message Reply window, attach the startup.txt file generated by CCleaner.

INSTALLED PROGRAMS
CCleaner | Tools icon | Uninstall button | click on Save to text file button (bottom right side)

Using the PAPER CLIP icon in the top panel of a Message Reply window, attach the install.txt file generated by CCleaner.

You will find a link to ccleaner in my sig

 

[MilesAhead]

Thanks GEWB,

I am not sure about Anti-Virus. I will double check.
But I will definitely check Scheduler.
Also I believe I have disabled Indexing long time ago but now I am not sure whether I did only on my old laptop.
Thank you very much. I will come back with some results soon as I check this settings.

In Task Manager click CPU column at the top to sort by CPU usage with highest first. See if you can get a look at the apps using the most. I found with Vista and a bit less with W7 that I had to turn off Windows Indexing and also Windows Media Player. They both kept wanting to index every file on my system. Disk and CPU was being used by the machine instead of by me.

Keeping WMP from making libraries out of my media files helped a lot. It wanted to look at every file to decide if it should be in the library. Also I turned off all the stuff about it sharing media files over the network.

 

[karlsnooks]

Milesahead,
Indexing is much improved in win 7. One can always:
Control Panel | Indexing
and then select what one would like indexed.

You can also use the cpu tab of RESMON.EXe to see which processes are using what.

 

[bokiboss]

Guys Thank you very much on all yours replies. It makes sense and to be honest some of your suggestion I did even knows that they exist.
I will definitely try and see what I will get but I would like to say that I have made some changes with Services.
When you go in Task Manager on TAB Services and then you on the bottom right press Services… again you got two tabs Extended and Standard.
I went through Extended… tab and after careful examination of all that are started automatically or with delay I have Stop and disable or set on Manual. I did make change only on processes that I definitely know that I don’t want them up and running. Such as, Acer updates, Acers other services etc. After that it came with significant difference. But I have to emphasise I still didn’t have enough time to check if this is working now for good or not.

As anti-virus I use Microsoft security essential and F-Prot. Both they are up and running. I know that might be a problem. If you think so please advise me what I should do/change.

 

[karlsnooks]

Stop messing around with the services. Let well enough alone. Solve problems instead of creating them.

Remove 100% f-Prot.

 

[MilesAhead]

Milesahead,
Indexing is much improved in win 7. One can always:
Control Panel | Indexing
and then select what one would like indexed.

You can also use the cpu tab of RESMON.EXe to see which processes are using what.

I prefer to use Everything Search. The behavior doesn't change just because you have Windows 6.1 instead of 6.0. The monitoring is much more intelligent than the indexing service. It doesn't launch dozens of svchost processes to read every file on my drive. I'd rather just use a tool that works out of the box than spend months tuning one that will never work the way I want.

 

[logicearth]

Seriously...what is the problem? Why do you not want the computer to do work while you are not using it? Would you prefer it tried to do work while you are using it? Come on, what problem is it causing having idle computer usage?

 

[legacy7955]

@Karl:

I just wanted to follow up.

Before I went ahead and did SFC Scan now, just for kicks I ran a full scan, and viola!!! the scheduled MpIdle task scan disappeared!!! No more CPU usage by MsMpEng.exe at idle. Issue gone.



Here is what I THINK MSE was trying to do.........

I believe that when the new MSE Client version 2 is installed as a precaution it wants to do a full deep scan of the PC just to be sure that everything is clean. Since by default MSE is only set to do a "quick scan" on a schedule.

MSE tries to be less intrusive by doing the full scan over a long period of time by way of the MpIdleTask scan. But some of us are very observant notice the HDD activity and until we look further believe that something is amiss. But it isn't.

The reason I think this is because in another thread here someone indicated that they found the same "issue" and it was resolved with a manual full scan. So it appears to be the design architecture trait. Of course having a very old CPU doesn't help I'm sure as most users have at least a dual core now.

Here is a link to the other thread about this:


Pretty interesting read as well.
http://www.sevenforums.com/system-security/29921-mse-thrashing-disks-after-boot.html

 

[karlsnooks]

Seriously...what is the problem? Why do you not want the computer to do work while you are not using it? Would you prefer it tried to do work while you are using it? Come on, what problem is it causing having idle computer usage?

+1. well-stated

 

[karlsnooks]

legacy,
basically you are correct. I forgot that most are not aware that when ms also did an engine update they scheduled a full scan to make sure that all known malware, not just viruses, was removed.

consequently, during idle times, mse is working away.

I also after the engine update, immediately ran a manual full scan.

 

[MilesAhead]

Seriously...what is the problem? Why do you not want the computer to do work while you are not using it? Would you prefer it tried to do work while you are using it? Come on, what problem is it causing having idle computer usage?

The problem lies with the definition of "idle." Since CPU usage is easy to detect and HD usage not so easy, low CPU usage for a period of time usually is all that's needed to constitute the "idle" condition. When I bought my first Vista machine, unknown to me, defrag.exe was in the task scheduler. Having just removed a bunch of crap ware I thought I'd run a defrag using jkDefrag(as it was known at the time.) Well what a surprise I got when the system decided it was "idle" while I was in the middle of a defrag and ran defrag.exe.

Needless to say, stuff crashed.

The WinAPI needs an Idle function call that takes disk usage into account. Especially if it's the system disk. The WMI performance scripting mumbo jumbo is just too arcane.

 

[legacy7955]

@karl:

I think the only problem I have is using an ancient P4 1.5Ghz processor. LOL I can't get upset and don't with MS because they can't possibly take into account such an old "legacy" piece of hardware! LOL

@MilesAhead:

Yes, but normally for MSE anyhow most people are at least using a 5 y/o or less CPU so what kills single core stuff that is old probably doesn't make much impact on a something made from say 2006 on.

I know you gurus here probably get annoyed at some of us "amateur" users especially when we come begging for help and then we don't always follow your directions correctly, so we have no one to blame but ourselves, but I appreciate help I have received here from you all. !!!!!


I absolutely LOVE this site , and find Win OS's fascinating and I'm endlessly interested in anything PC hardware or software. I just don't use a computer I like to understand how they work too. But I know that MS has to make sure that the everyday user is well taken care of only a few of us are really geeky in this respect.

I can't imagine what it would be like using Apple OS X. How boring! Seriously! If I had to look at a different OS I guess it would be Ubuntu. Oh well, Apple is too cool for me anyhow.

Since I still have one PC operating on XP does anyone have a suggestion as to which site would be on par with sevenforums ?