Big CPU load what to do. The system process loads the processor: why it happens and how to fix the problem

Big CPU load what to do.  The system process loads the processor: why it happens and how to fix the problem
Big CPU load what to do. The system process loads the processor: why it happens and how to fix the problem

This short note will be devoted to the topic of detecting the source of a sudden load on the processor. CPU load, so what? In the process of working with the Windows operating system, sudden brakes are a regular reaction to the loading of "gluttonous" applications by us, for example, opening 100 tabs in Google browser Chrome. Everything is predictable here, because the cause of such problems is the work of a resource-demanding application, which, depending on the specifics of the task being performed, can heavily load the processor. It is a completely different matter when the load on the processor occurs by itself, for no apparent reason. For example, in an idle or practically unloaded system that performs regular work, slowdowns suddenly occur. Such a load can be classified as follows:

  • High load on the processor, suddenly appearing and (not) disappearing after a certain period of time;
  • Constant load on the processor that does not change its symptoms throughout the entire cycle of operation operating system;

In the situations described, options are not ruled out when the processor is 100 percent loaded, or the load may not be complete. You can also select a constant or interval load. How to determine in the described situations what is loading the processor? To answer this question, you need to find the process that is running in the operating system and is the source of the abnormal load. And specialized software will help us with this.

WPT installation

First, we need to install a toolkit called Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT), which is included with Windows SDK. The installation process is described in detail in the article, you can easily install the Windows Performance Toolkit using it, just do not forget to check the "Windows Performance Toolkit" item during the installation process. Remember that it would be better to install a distribution that matches the bitness of your platform. At the end of the installation process, the possible working directories of the toolkit are:

  • C:\Program Files\ Microsoft Windows Performance Toolkit;
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.x\;

Although the paths may change in future distributions.

Installation on each new problem station can be omitted. You just need to copy the Microsoft Windows Performance Toolkit directory to a USB flash drive or directly to the operating system under study and use the utilities in it as portable applications. In this case, remember to run the required utilities directly from the package directory.

Creating a load

Unfortunately, at the moment when I decided to finish my own notes, I did not have a "live" example at hand on a specific problem of processor load. At one time, when I observed similar problems, I somehow did not bother to collect material for publication, so we will need to independently recreate the situation with the load, which would be close to a typical working one.

If you already have an actual CPU load issue that needs to be addressed, you can skip this section.

To create a load, we will use a utility called Sysinternals. The utility is old, perhaps already in Windows environment 7 is not entirely relevant, but this is the first thing that turned up under my arm. Immediately after the start, the utility launches the primary thread for execution and displays a graphical user interface containing the settings:

In the figure above, you can see that I have checked the checkboxes that need to be activated in the interface of the CPUStres utility in order to run the maximum (4) number of threads within the process. In addition, you can play around with the values ​​of the Thread Priority and Activity parameters for each thread in order to create the required load. In fact, we do not have the goal of simulating the maximum load on the processor, our task is to make the load tangible and periodic.

Monitoring

The load has been created, now let's proceed directly to data collection. Actually, the next part of the answer to the question what is loading the processor consists in collecting information using the tools that are part of the WPT, or in other words, monitoring the system over a (rather short) period of time. To do this, we will use a provider and tracing session controller called xperf .

The command below is run as account with local administrator rights

On the command line, execute the following series of commands:

xperf -on latency -stackwalk profile -buffersize 2048 -MaxFile 1024 -FileMode Circular && timeout -1 && xperf -d c:\cpu.etl

What happens after executing the above series of commands?

  • Using the xperf controller, a kernel trace session is enabled with the latency option. Latency is a group that includes a number of predefined kernel providers, including profiling, which captures the activity of the processor every millisecond. The Stackwalk Profile option causes the call stack to be written each time a processor profiling event occurs.
  • The timeout -1 command waits for the user to press any key;
  • After pressing the key, the xperf -d c:\cpu.etl command causes the controller to terminate the event tracing session and save the results to the c:\cpu.etl file.

Therefore, the algorithm of our actions is as follows: when there is a load on the CPU, we run the series of commands described above, wait 30 seconds, then press any key and wait for the end of the process of generating the result file. Since the amount of information collected can be quite large, it will take some time to assemble the file, please be patient. IN general view, on the monitor screen you can see the following picture:

Therefore, only after the tracing process collects the result file and falls out into command line, only after that we can proceed to the next stage.

Mistakes

The first time you run the xperf utility, you may see the following alerts and errors:

xperf: warning: This system is not fully configured for x64 stack tracing. Please modify the registry under: HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and set the value: DisablePagingExecutive (REG_DWORD) = 1 Then reboot before retrying tracing. Note: Tracing has been enabled, this is just a warning.

xperf: warning: This system is not fully configured for x64 stack tracing.

Please modify the registry under:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

and set the value:

DisablePagingExecutive(REG_DWORD) = 1

Then reboot before retrying tracing.

Note: Tracing has been enabled, this is just a warning.

This warning has no effect on the current trace session and can be ignored. It tells us that the system is not properly configured for stack tracing of 64-bit processes. The current setting allows unloading of pages containing executable code kernel/drivers from random access memory to the swap file. Hints that it would be nice, in the future, to turn on the prohibition of unloading kernel pages from RAM. Just set the parameter to "1" and reboot.

xperf: error: NT Kernel Logger: Cannot create a file when that file already exists. (0xb7).

A rather strange error, in the localized version it sounds like "Can't create file because file is already in use". Says that in this moment tracing has already been started through some of the system / third-party tools. To solve the problem, you need to disable tracing, a universal remedy is also a reboot :)

Analysis of results

What loads the processor? We are getting closer to answering this question. After we have completed tracing, we go to the target folder specified by us in the launch options of the xperf utility (in my case, this is the root of the C:\ drive) and proceed to analyze the results. To do this, double-click to open the resulting cpu.etl report in the associated viewer utility.

  • For older versions of WPT, this is xperfview.exe ;
  • For new versions of WPT, this is wpa.exe ;

The main window will open Windows programs Performance Analyzer:

The appearance of the window may change from version to version. It is important for us to find a graph called CPU Usage (Sampled) or CPU Sampling by Process . For example, for older versions, in the Graphs menu, check the box next to the CPU Sampling by Process option. After that, the corresponding chart will appear in the main window.

CPU Sampling - Measurements of CPU time spent on processes throughout the entire trace cycle.

On this graph, we can observe the typical bursts of load caused by the activity of the CPUStres utility. The y-axis of this graph displays the percentage of CPU usage. Click anywhere on the CPU Sampling by Process chart right button mouse and select the Summary Table item from the context menu that opens. A new window will open:

The CPU Sampling Summary Table window that opens may look slightly different, because in its default state, it usually does not display the Stack column. In this case, to hold the window to the described view, call the menu item Columns (Columns) and mark the checkbox Stack.

You can optionally configure the Microsoft Symbol Server path to get detailed information about the names of called functions. Naturally, the names will be matched only with those functions for which there are (that is, we will not get names for most third-party programs). To connect symbols, go to the Trace menu, then to the Configure Server Paths section, then set the _NT_SYMBOL_PATH parameter to the value srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols. Then, in the Trace menu, enable the Load Symbols option. But be careful, symbols will be downloaded from the Internet for each module found in the call stacks, the amount of data downloaded is sometimes quite large, in which case the interface may hang until the symbols are completely loaded. The last time the procedure took me about 10 minutes, during which the analyzer window did not respond.

What do we observe in the summary table? The Count column displays the number of measurements that were made for each process. And the column Weight (Weight), in turn, determines the amount of time spent on these measurements (in milliseconds). More attentive readers may have noticed that the values ​​of the columns are almost identical, with a slight discrepancy. This is due to the sampling interval frequency of 1 kHz (KHz). And the slight discrepancies in the values ​​of Weight and Count are explained by the fact that the sampling intervals are not perfectly aligned. Processes are sorted in descending order of Weight, which is generally a convenient sorting criterion as it arranges processes in descending order of the amount of time spent on them.

Both of these columns (Weight / Count) reflect the degree of processor usage, which, in general, is the most important thing for us in the context of this task.

What technique can be used here to find the culprit of intensive processor usage? Since the most processor-intensive applications are at the top and sorted down as the load decreases, we will analyze the list of processes from above. For each process in the Stack column, we expand all the available grouped call stacks with the [+] icon, so we should get something like a hierarchical structure. In the expanded call stacks of a particular process, we look at all the modules located there. We are only interested in those modules for which the Weight column has large values ​​and after which there is a sharp drop in CPU time in the next line.

When iterating over modules in the call stack, pay attention to third-party drivers/processes first, as they are most likely to be the culprits.

Guided by such a strategy, we can identify the culprit of the load on the processor. And what to do after finding the source of the problem? First you need to determine the author / ownership of the module, for this purpose, you can use any search engine. Once you have determined the ownership of the module, you have several possible options for further actions:

  • You can download from the manufacturer's website latest version drivers/programs and update.
  • If the first point did not help, you can try to roll back to a more early version drivers.
  • If there is no earlier version, then in the very last resort you can completely remove the driver / program.

conclusions

Thus, we answered the question of what loads the processor. But why do we need all these tools from the Windows Performance Tools, because we could simply call the Task Manager at the time of abnormal load and trace the source of the problem of using the central processing unit (CPU). Yes, this approach is really relevant, but only for applications! And the method described in this article using the utilities of the WPT kit allows you to find the mass additional information on failure:

  • the source of the problem among kernel-mode modules (processes/drivers) executing in the context of the System process;
  • the source of the problem among the processes of services (services) grouped within single processes svchost.exe ;
  • see the call stacks of modules, which allows you to dive deeper into the study of the failure.

Working on a personal computer requires quite a lot of effort from the user. But this is only if the main goal is to create a productive device. If the PC slows down, then a variety of reasons can contribute to this.

One of the most common options is CPU overload. If the user begins to analyze the current situation, he may note that the fault lies with completely incomprehensible applications and running processes.

Strange loading of the central process is a problem that many users face. This also applies to the most modern processors. Therefore, the cause must be looked for other than outdated equipment.

In some situations, you can reinstall the operating system. Also a popular method is to update and install the necessary drivers. This real problem needs to be dealt with using effective techniques.

Finding out the reasons

The relevance of this issue is very great. Users need to first find out which program is to blame for such a negative situation. A similar problem is quite common, so many users are interested in it.

To assess the degree of CPU congestion, you need to open the task manager. After that, go to the tab with all the applications that are running on the personal computer. Next, all objects are sorted according to certain parameters. You can do this by name or by load.

The problem can occur even when the user has closed the application, but it is still in the active list. As a result, they load the system. And the user may not even be aware of this, because he is sure that he closed the program, the game.

If it crashes, you can reboot personal computer. In some cases, this helps, because, in this way, downloaded programs will still be closed. You can also use the task manager. With it, you can close all the necessary objects even faster.

At the time of processing the result of all displayed processes that are in the download, the user should conduct an analysis. Some applications may be dangerous. If they are not eliminated in time, then users will experience a gradual or sharp decrease in device performance.

Help from a professional

A situation may arise when all programs are closed, but the CPU load is quite high. Such situations are also not uncommon. In this case, you can not do without the help of specialists. It is not necessary to carry the device to the master. You can use the Process Explorer utility.

The application will help you to see all hidden downloads. As soon as the list appears on the screen, you can sort out unnecessary services. You should also find out if there are any suspicious objects in the device. To do this, you need to use this software product, because the Task Manager is not always able to display all the elements.

Active wrestling

The most common cause of the problem is the lack of necessary drivers. Users need to boot the device using safe mode. Immediately after that, you can evaluate whether there is a load on the processor or there is no such problem.

In most cases, the reason lies precisely in the drivers. by the most the right way is to reinstall the OS. It is better to entrust such actions to a specialist. Only after installing the system, it is necessary to carefully load the drivers. These components must be installed one at a time.

Users need to be very careful. It is better to download directly from the official website of the manufacturer of your used device. In this case, the risk of problems is reduced to zero.

In second place are viruses. It is these pests that can negatively affect the operation of the processor. Some of these objects can extract files. Also, pests simply steal personal data and other important components. The appearance of banners is also the influence of malware.

Troubleshooting is a very simple process. It is enough just to install a high-quality anti-virus service. First of all, it will start the process of scanning the system. An effective utility is able to identify all pests different types and types. After that, it will be possible to eliminate all threats and begin to eliminate problems that arose due to viruses.

The performance of the device may also decrease if the HDD operation mode is activated. It is important to ensure that the hard drive works exclusively in DMA mode. Any other option will lead to all sorts of problems and failures.

You can also check the impact of all connected objects. To do this, simply turn off the mouse, USB flash drive, if it is a laptop. If the work is carried out with a stationary computer, then the user must also turn off the monitor and keyboard.

You should pay attention to the Device Manager. If yellow or red icons are displayed next to some devices, this may mean incorrect operation or lack of drivers. So users need to be sure to study all the displayed information.

Based on this, conclusions can be drawn about the state of each element. So you can download right away. missing drivers or update outdated versions. If necessary, users can entrust some problems to real masters who will certainly help solve all problems professionally.

Another common cause is the presence of dust and dirt. Some users do not keep the device clean. Therefore, the result of such a negligent attitude is overheating of the device. The cooler starts to work much faster just to cool down the personal computer.

Also changeover differential in operation mode. The device can work either stronger or weaker. Also, spontaneous reboot and shutdown of the PC is no exception. All these failures can be fixed by users themselves.

It is important to constantly monitor the temperature of the device. For this it should special utility. The application will be able to estimate the optimal performance indicator. When it reaches a critical level, a notification will be shown. So the user needs to instantly identify the cause and try to eliminate it as soon as possible.

Dust removal should be done at least twice a year. Each user can do it on their own. Also, during the cleaning process, you should replace the thermal paste. This is a fairly simple process. You should first read or watch a video on this topic.

Each of the considered troubleshooting options is really effective. It is enough for users to find out the reason in order to choose the right technique. If it is difficult to decide to implement any process, then you can simply reinstall the operating system. This is a win-win.

Overloading the processor of a computer or laptop can be caused by a number of reasons - from technical obsolescence of hardware to viruses that load the system.

By itself, high CPU usage is not a problem. All resources can be used up when running games, ultra-high quality videos, video editing applications, archivers, antivirus checks. First of all, you need to check whether the processor is really overloaded or the cause slow work there were other problems.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager and click on the CPU column to sort. You can also get into the dispatcher by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del and selecting the desired item in the menu that appears.

Normally, the to-do list should look something like this. When the load is high, one or more tasks will take up most of the processor time. If one of the applications takes 50-100% of the power for itself constantly, this may be a symptom of a problem.

For example, in the screenshot, almost half the power of the i5-2500k processor is occupied by the "Task Manager" and system interrupts, which should not be.

Hardware causes of overload

Despite the common misconception, it is rarely the cause of processor overload. The processor is more likely to take the system into a reboot or freeze completely than to work at 100% power for a long time. However, such cases sometimes occur and the user needs to know how to protect themselves from them.

Legacy equipment

The most common cause of processor overload is the obsolescence of a PC or laptop. Software does not stand still: if five years ago for a comfortable Google's work Chrome was missing a single-core processor with a couple of hundred megabytes of RAM, now several heavy tabs can use the resources of several cores and several gigabytes. In 2018, a 4-core processor with 6-8 gigabytes of memory will be required for comfortable work.

If there is no money for new hardware, try to follow these tips:

  • do not run multiple applications at once. This not only makes it difficult for the processor to work by itself - RAM filled to capacity creates additional load;
  • use older versions of programs whenever possible. Yes, it can be inconvenient and insecure, but older versions of applications will be much less demanding;
  • disable unnecessary services and programs in startup. This can be done in the "Startup" and "Services" tabs of the "Task Manager";
  • try to avoid situations in which the processor will be loaded at 100% unnecessarily. For example, don't open a lot of browser tabs or 4K videos on a small laptop screen.

Overclocking

The next situation that can cause overload is overclocking or overclocking. There is nothing wrong with overclocking the characteristics of devices in itself, all major manufacturers provide programs for adjusting the frequencies of the processor and video card. However, exceeding the allowed limits for the processor can lead to:

  • overheating;
  • image artifacts;
  • application errors and crashes;
  • freezes;
  • 100% CPU usage for trivial tasks.

Here, for verification, you should use diagnostic utilities that write the results to the log. For detailed statistics on all components, MSI Afterburner is suitable.

CPU overheating

By itself, high temperature rarely causes overload directly, much more often it disables the processor or triggers mechanisms that reduce frequencies and voltage on the device to protect it. on the sensors can be viewed in AIDA64.

How to solve the problem with overheating?

  • clean the body system block from dust. Pay special attention to the heatsink and CPU fan. For a laptop, the cleaning procedure should be carried out at least once every one and a half to two years;
  • If the computer has been in use for two years or more, remove the thermal paste between the fan and processor cover. Apply a new even layer;
  • in the case when standard cooling does not cope or the cooler does not work - replace it with a more powerful one. Preferably with a massive aluminum heatsink with copper tubes;
  • do not block the ventilation holes of the system unit when replacing it.

Note! The normal temperature of a working processor is about 40 degrees, at 70-80 degrees the BIOS protection mechanisms are activated.

Software overload causes

It is much easier to get 100% load on the processor by software than by hardware - you just need to make a mistake in the antivirus check settings or download an incompatible one. new system program.

Antiviruses and viruses

Of the entire list of causes of possible problems leading to 100% CPU usage, most often problems arise with antiviruses. Real-time file checks are a resource-intensive task that, when wrong settings can take forever.

On weak computers, installing a cloud-based antivirus, like Panda Cloud Cleaner, will help. It is much more demanding on the quality of the Internet, but the load on the processor is minimal.

In Windows 10, you can use the built-in Defender, which is quite enough for home tasks.

The other side of the coin is viruses on an unprotected PC. Malicious programs can use your computer for mining or as a gateway for DDOS attacks. For a one-time cleaning of existing problems, use Dr.Web Cureit!

Automatic update

An overload can be caused by an unsuccessful update of the operating system or drivers. Such problems happened in 2015 for users of beta versions of Windows 10. To solve the problem, try installing different versions of drivers, rolling back updates through a system restore point, or disabling them completely.


In Windows 10, disabling updates has no visible effect of overload protection.

Background apps

A number of programs to support their functionality runs in the background. For example, Skype and LibreOffice are constantly in RAM, for fast loading. In some situations, this can become a problem - for example, when a program hangs in the background, which takes up from half to all of the computer's resources.

You can also disable a background application in the "Task Manager" if you hover over the selected one with the mouse cursor. running application and use the "End task" button.

Video - CPU usage 100 percent, what to do on Windows 7,8,10?

Hello.

One of the most common reasons why a computer slows down is processor load, and sometimes incomprehensible applications and processes.

Not so long ago, on one computer of a friend, I had to deal with “incomprehensible” CPU usage, which sometimes reached 100%, although there were no programs that could load it that way (by the way, the processor was quite modern Intel inside Core i3). The problem was solved by reinstalling the system and installing new drivers (but more on that later ...).

Actually, I decided that this problem is quite popular and will be of interest to a wide range of users. In the article I will give recommendations, thanks to which you can independently figure out why the processor is loaded, and how to reduce the load on it. So…

1. Question number 1 - what program is the processor loaded with?

To find out how much the processor is loaded, open the Windows Task Manager.

Buttons: Ctrl+Shift+Esc (or Ctrl+Alt+Del) .

By the way, very often the problem arises of the following plan: you worked, for example, in Adobe Photoshop, then they closed the program, but it remained in the processes (or this happens all the time with some games). As a result, they “eat” resources, and not small ones. Because of this, the computer starts to slow down. Therefore, very often the first recommendation in such cases is to restart the PC (because in this case such applications will be closed), or go to the task manager and remove such a process.

2. Question number 2 - there is CPU usage, applications and processes that load - no! What to do?

When setting up one of the computers, I encountered an incomprehensible CPU load - there is a load, there are no processes! The screenshot below shows how it looks in the task manager.

On the one hand, it is surprising: the “Display processes of all users” checkbox is enabled, there is nothing among the processes, and the PC load jumps 16-30%!

To see all processes that load the PC - run free utility Process Explorer. Next, sort all the processes by load (CPU column) and see if there are any suspicious "elements" there (task manager does not show some processes, unlike Process Explorer).

Link to office Process Explorer site: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb896653.aspx

Process Explorer - load the processor by ~ 20% system interrupts (Hardware interrupts and DPCs). When everything is in order, usually, the CPU usage associated with Hardware interrupts and DPCs does not exceed 0.5-1%.

In my case, the culprit was hardware interrupts and DPCs. By the way, I’ll say that sometimes fixing the PC load associated with them is quite troublesome and complicated (besides, sometimes they can load the processor not only by 30%, but by 100%!).

The fact is that the CPU is loaded because of them in several cases: problems with drivers; viruses; HDD works not in DMA mode, but in PIO mode; problems with peripheral equipment (e.g. printer, scanner, network cards, flash and HDD drives, etc.).

1. Problems with drivers

The most common reason for CPU usage system interrupts. I recommend doing the following: boot the PC into safe mode and see if there is a load on the processor: if it is not, the reason is very high in the drivers! In general, the simplest and fast way in this case is to reinstall Windows system and then install one driver at a time and see if CPU usage appears (as soon as it does, you've found the culprit).

Most often, the fault here is network cards + universal drivers from Microsoft, which are installed immediately when Windows installation(sorry for the tautology). I recommend downloading and updating all drivers from the official website of your laptop/computer manufacturer.

Plus check your computer sometimes third party programs(who are looking for adware, mailware, etc.): about them in detail.

3.Mode work hard disk

The mode of operation of the HDD can also affect the loading and performance of the PC. In general, if the hard drive does not work in DMA mode, but in PIO mode, you will immediately notice this with terrible “brakes”!

4. Problems with peripheral equipment

Disconnect everything from your laptop or PC, leave the bare minimum (mouse, keyboard, monitor). I also recommend paying attention to device Manager, will it not contain installed devices with yellow or red icons (this means either there are no drivers or they are not working correctly).

How to open device manager? The easiest way is to open the panel Windows controls and enter the word "dispatcher" into the search bar. See screenshot below.

Device manager: there are no drivers for devices (disk drives), they may not work correctly (or most likely not work at all).

3. Question number 3 - overheating and dust can be the reason for loading the processor ?!

The reason why the processor can be loaded and the computer starts to slow down is that it may be overheating. Usually, characteristics overheating, such as:

  • increased cooler hum: the number of revolutions per minute increases because of this, the noise from it is getting stronger. If you have a laptop: then swiping your hand next to the left side (usually there is an outlet for hot air on laptops) - you can notice how much air is blown out and how hot it is. Sometimes - the hand does not tolerate (this is not good)!
  • braking and slowing down the computer (laptop);
  • refusal to boot with errors reporting failures in the cooling system, etc.

For example, in the AIDA 64 program, to view the processor temperature, you need to open the " Computer/sensor«.

AIDA64 - processor temperature 49gr. C.

How to find out what temperature is critical for your processor and what is normal?

The easiest way is to look at the manufacturer's website, this information is always indicated there. It is rather difficult to give general figures for different models processors.

In general, on average, if the temperature of the processor is not higher than 40 gr. C. - then everything is fine. Above 50gr. C. - may indicate problems in the cooling system (for example, an abundance of dust). However, for some models of processors, this temperature is the usual operating temperature. This is especially true for laptops, where due to limited space it is difficult to organize good system cooling. By the way, on laptops and 70 gr. C. - maybe normal temperature under load.

Dust cleaning: when, how and how many times?

In general, it is advisable to clean a computer or laptop from dust 1-2 times a year (although a lot depends on your premises, some people have more dust, some less ...). Once every 3-4 years, it is advisable to replace the thermal paste. Both operations are not difficult and can be performed independently.

In order not to repeat myself, I will give a couple of links below ...

How to clean the computer from dust and replace the thermal paste:

Cleaning a laptop from dust, how to wipe the screen:

PS

That's all for today. By the way, if the measures suggested above did not help, you can try to reinstall Windows (or even replace it with a newer one, for example, change Windows 7 to Windows 8). Sometimes, it is easier to reinstall the OS than to look for the cause: you will save time and money ... In general, sometimes you need to do backups(when everything works well).

The processor is a key element in the PC, data processing takes place through it. Any program or application loads the processor to one degree or another. The less processor is loaded, the faster and more stable the system works (files, folders, applications open quickly). Therefore, it is very important that the processor is not loaded at 100% and has free resources to process the necessary tasks.

The main reasons for the maximum load

There can be several reasons for the maximum CPU usage by 100% in Windows XP, 7, 8, 10, and each has its own solutions. Most common cause is the consumption of all processor resources by a certain program or service. It can also be a malfunction of the service due to which it starts to behave unstable.

Many do not attach much importance to cleaning the PC from dust and replacing the thermal paste, which leads to overheating, thereby giving a heavy load on the CPU.

To make sure exactly what is the reason for the high processor load, you need to a number of diagnostic manipulations to identify it.

Determine the program that loads the processor

To reduce the load on the CPU, you can use Task Manager. You can get into it different ways : press simultaneously Ctrl+Shift+Esc or Ctrl+Alt+Delete or go through the start menu to context menu taskbar and there already find the dispatcher.

When the task manager is open, you need to go to the " Processes”, which will display the processes and services of the system. For convenience, they can be sorted by clicking on the column at the top " CPU" or " CPU» (in different Windows versions differently).

And after these manipulations, you can see which program or service is loading the CPU. It often happens that "heavy" programs (which consume a large number of PC resources) leave after closing residual services or applications not correctly terminated, thereby affecting the performance of the computer. Very often browsers "sin" in this way. In addition, often videos in high quality, which the PC simply cannot handle, can load and slow down work.

You can solve this by clicking LMB (left mouse button) on the application that consumes the CPU and clicking " End task”, thereby removing the program from the PC resources. You have to be careful here because There's a possibility terminate some system service and then you have to manually restart the computer.

CPU load for no reason

It happens that in the standard Task Manager utility, processes that load the CPU are not visible, but the processor is still 100 percent loaded for no reason. In such cases, you can contact third party programs.

Download and run the AVZ program. Go to "Tools/Process Manager" there will be showing all processes running on the computer. Main advantage AVZ is that the program marks system processes in green. Those. you should look closely if there is a svchosts.exe process, which is painted black.

If no third-party processes are found, then you can try disable automatic update Windows.

To disable updates, you need to go to the tab " Services”, the easiest way is to press Win + R, in the window that appears, write services.msc and click “OK”. In the window that opens, find the line " Update centreWindows”, double-click on it and select “Startup type” - Disabled, and click the “Stop” button below. Then save the settings and restart the PC.

CPU load due to overheating

The key parameter for the stable operation of the computer is its temperature. If the CPU starts to overheat, then the user notices unstable job systems, freezes, blue screen” and sudden shutdowns of the PC.

To find out the CPU temperature, you should use third-party programs, such as Aida 64.

The computer may overheat several reasons:

  1. Pollution. A computer or laptop requires constant cleaning (once every 6-12 months), because dust accumulates in it during use, which impairs the operation of coolers and the heat transfer of the radiator, thereby contributing to overheating.
    Solution: take the computer to service center to clean it, or open the side cover yourself and gently but thoroughly remove all accumulated dust. (If you are a laptop owner, you will have to carry it to a service center)
  1. Cooler malfunctions. The main task of the cooler is to continuously supply cold air to the heatsink to cool the CPU. If it fails, the computer starts to overheat. You can verify the malfunction yourself, you should open the side cover of the computer and see if the cooler rotates normally (if there are any squeaks, crackling)
    Solution: If the cooler is really defective, you should immediately contact the service center for its subsequent replacement.
  1. high room temperature. This problem is very actual in the summer season, at home and on the street it is hot, therefore, the cooler will suck in hot air. Because of this, its efficiency in terms of cooling drops significantly.
    Solution: You can open the side cover of the computer yourself and direct a conventional fan there. For laptops, special stands with cooling are produced.

Outdated PC

New technologies are moving forward very quickly, the computer sphere is one of them. Every day there are updates for various programs and every year standard programs start eating everything large quantity resources.

If at startup standard application (browser, paint, photo viewer) CPU usage becomes 50% or 100% and does not decrease, then most likely it is time to update the PC configuration.

Applications in startup

Many people use PC for years without reinstalling windows and cleaning it from programs. Over time and the installation of certain applications, the autorun of the system becomes clogged and when the OS is loaded, programs are loaded that a person has not used for a long time. Because of this, the CPU can be constantly loaded, to avoid this you should clear "startup"

There is a popular utility CCleaner, with its help you can remove programs, which you have not used for a long time, leaving only the most relevant and antivirus.