W7: Fourth core always active, issue?

[Jason]

Hey guys, I'm new to this forum.. I apologize if this is the incorrect forum, but it seems to be the right one.

Okay, running under Windows Vista SP2 (x64), my CPU idle spikes from 0% to 2%, sometimes even as high as 5% -- no big deal.

Different story for W7: the fourth core of my processor is always active. It seems to be 8-80% (30% average, I guess) all the time.. my total idle usage is around 12-20%, all the time. This cannot be healthy for my system.

This happens with a fresh install of W7, granted I installed it a month ago, it still persists. I figured it would go away, but it hasn't. The activity hasn't gotten worse or better, it has stayed the same.

I cannot narrow down what is causing the issue. It's evident that it's the OS, as Vista doesn't do it, and it occurred after a fresh install.

Task manager doesn't report any irregularities, all is well. The only active "process" is System Idle Process..

If someone could help me with this issue, I would be very appreciative.

 

[Airbot]

Hi Jason and welcome,

Try a repair install. Here's the tutorial for how to do it. Might help, might not. Worth a shot though.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html?ltr=R

 

[Jason]

Would you happen to know if I need the physical disk? I never burned the ISO in the first place, I just mounted it with Daemon

I'm assuming I can just mount it and repair, but I figured I'd ask you first.

 

[CorrsFan]

Have you checked resource monitor?

My first guess would be that it's an indexing process that's running in the background, but have you checked Resource Monitor to see if you can identify a specific process that's using cpu? When you launch Task Manager, go to the Performance tab and hit the Resource Monitor button. The Processes section will give you a little more information than the Task Manger provides.

FWIW, all 4 cores on my i7 920 seem to be doing something most of the time, albiet not much....certainly nowhere near 30%.