High CPU utilisation on dual core

jabaroon

Hey all,

I have a rather frustrating problem with my Dell dual core PC. When it has been running for a while (maybe a day or more?), one of the CPU cores seems to get almost 100% utilised yet, if you look at the process information, "System Idle Process" takes 99% of the CPU cycles.

Attached is a CPU utilisation graph that shows what I mean. I cant seem to find out what system process (or other) is causing this and its annoying. If I reboot the PC, all is fine (for a while).

Any ideas?

8T8

Three is a smilair topic here with some possible tips.

Uses SysInternals Process Explorer to track down the the process causing the problem.

Do a check or spyware/viruses.

Add any new hardware recently ?

Is a lot of the Dell pre-installed software still present on the machine have you tried removing it ?

jabaroon

8T8 wrote:

Three is a smilair topic here with some possible tips.

Uses SysInternals Process Explorer to track down the the process causing the problem.

Do a check or spyware/viruses.

Add any new hardware recently ?

Is a lot of the Dell pre-installed software still present on the machine have you tried removing it ?

Yep, definatley similar to those posted in the threads provided. Thanks for that. It seems to be related to a lot of interrupts occurring. I havent added any new hardware in ages and the problem doesn't occurr when the PC is rebooted. It only develops over time when running for a few days. Any ideas on what might be causing the interrupts?

8T8

Honestly I dont know just looking at the software running in that screenshot you have a lot of background stuff running on the box vmware, apache etc if something is misconfigured it could be the cause but I'm just speculating.

ctsvccda.exe I would remove that is the Creative CD Access service a known trouble maker it's for when you put in a CD the Creative bundle ware knows about it etc.

More wild guesses;

Make sure you have the latest bios installed for the motherboard.

Install Intel chipset drivers.

You could try this fix by MS (which corrects an issue with dual core CPU's), you need to install this patch first then apply this registry tweak at the bottom of that MS page.

jabaroon

Ok, I think i have it solved. It appears to be a combination of two things. I had an un-terminated adaptec scsi card in the machine that was more than likely generating interrupts.

However, the main culprit was the fact that my second hard drive is in PIO mode . Now, I am unable to get it into DMA mode so I suspect that it is somehow incompatible (SATA-2 vs 1) with my existing Dell HD.

Having googl'ed around, I think the best option is to jumper it down from SATA-2 to SATA-1 and see if that helps. Now, the problem is that I need to get one of those tiny SATA HD jumpers!!

I tried Marx Computers today and they didn't have one. By chance, would anyone have one or recomend somewhere where I might get one?

Please Note: This is not an ordinary HD jumper, its about half the size, its TINY!

Thanks,
Jab

anthony4335

I am not sure if this helps but a couple of years ago I had an issue with burning CD ,where I would get a glitch in a track, this was caused by windows XP recieving more than 5 crc's from the drive in which it then defaulted the transfer mode to PIO and I was unable to switch it back ,there was a hot fix at the time that worked but this was incorperated into service pack 1.a. Don't know if this helps but might lead you down the right track