Laptop cpu usage spiking

Tradbike

Hey, looking for help here 'cos I'm a dunce when it comes to tech stuff. Laptop (Toshiba sat-p300-windows vista) cpu usage is spiking to almost 100% when opening any programs making everything stall for about a minute, making it almost impossible to use, sometimes it stalls so bad i get a rediculously loud warning beep. Ran anti-virus (AVG) and checked for malware (malwarebyte) and virus' etc doesnt seem to be the problem. Looking at processes in task manager and there's nothing out of the ordinary using up too much memory. Anyone have any clue what's goin' on?

Allyall

Hi, What other programs are running in the background?


What Service Pack is on your laptop? When you go to Start, then Right Click on Computer and go to properties, you should see Windows vista and underneath, "Service Pack #"
Where a number would be instead of "#"
If you don't see "Service Pack #" written anywhere, then you should get them.

Vista SP1

and once Service Pack 1 is installed, then install

Vista SP2

Other issues could be causing this type of problem, but that's something i would check first.

Tradbike

Thanks for reply, am on service pack 2 all up to date, and in windows task manager processes that top the memory usage at the mo are firefox, skype, dwm and windows explorer, rest have insignificant memory usage compared to these

cookie1977

How many process from all users running at rest?

Tradbike

Opened up processes from all users and there's 96 at the moment, the highest memory usage from something called scvhost.exe

cookie1977

Thats a lot of processes. Dont worry about scvhost.exe it 's a normal process for windows. Have a look here
http://www.blackviper.com/2009/05/31/black-vipers-windows-vista-service-pack-2-service-configurations/
and have a look at the "safe" column. If you change anything make notes in case you need to undo the setting. You could also download, install, update and run a full scan of malwarebytes
www.malwarebytes.org
in case there's any processes caused by spyware/malware

obrien.cathal

Another option would be to open the task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) go to the processes tab and select show processes from all users. Then sort by CPU usage. If you take a note of what processes are utilising the most CPU you will be one step closer to figuring out what is causing your slow down.

To troubleshoot further you could try booting in safe mode and observe whether you get any slowdown in performance. If not then you might be able to try disabling programs from running at startup as a means to isolate the guilty party. To do so run 'msconfig' from the command line and go to the startup tab. Start by disabling all software from running at startup and reboot. Gradually reenable any software you wish and reboot to check whether you can replicate the symptoms.

Hope this is of use,
Cathal

cookie1977

I would doubt it's any one particular process thats the problem. Having 96 processes running at rest is a lot of processes.
Download ccleaner from www.ccleaner.com
install it and open it, click tools and startup
post on here whats listed and we can tell you what to disable or delete from startup

obrien.cathal

I would disagree. Every other week there's a new process highlighted on the Technet forums that brings users OS to a halt. It doesn't necessarily have to use up much memory but it can monopolise an awful lot of CPU time. Take the following link as an example http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproperf/thread/d2935005-3b5f-417b-be14-bdb88c2048ef

I would also disagree with spending money on ccleaner when msconfig provides the same startup functionality. And msconfig is made by Microsoft so it's bound to be more registry friendly than a third party app. Though that's just my two cents.

Cathal

cookie1977

ccleaner is 100% free Cathal


While disabling programs in msconfig is handy if you want to re enable them it's not good at getting rid of unwanted startup programs which is what ccleaner is excellent at.
If you dont want to use ccleaner you can go directly into the registry.
Click start click run type regedit
Startup programs are located:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE
Microsoft
Windows
CurrentVersion
Run

Allyall

You can kill svchost (the one using the most cpu) and it won't affect anything, but it may come back. It's running on the back of another program, maybe a graphics editor or movie player.
You'll notice when it goes up again what program kick started it.

Right click on a blank space on the taskbar at the bottom (usually) of the screen and click on "Start task manager".
Then click on the tab named "Processes" and click "Show processes from all users" at the bottom of the window.
Then right click on the svchost that is using the most cpu and choose "Go To Service(s)"
The highlighted items that it shows you, are the services that are being used by that svchost. Find out which one(s) are using the most and right click on them and choose "stop service" (Make sure it's not something you are in the middle of using, e.g. MS WORD etc.)

And Ccleaner is brilliant too, as mentioned above.
Make sure iTunes, Javascheduler, Realscheduler, quicktime, bonjour, apple, and more are NOT running at startup. Reboot.

Many more then that, you'll know the programs you don't need to startup with the PC.

Firefox up to date? FF4?

Last few Firefox have been a major culprit with all of their plugins and addons not helping.


Trying to remember the name of the process program microsoft bought a year or so ago..
Maybe someone else will remember..

EDIT - You can also use Mike Lins startup CPL to pick and choose what starts with windows.

cookie1977

ccleaner reviews with link to the original review

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/reviews

obrien.cathal

I think it's process explorer AllyAll it can be downloaded here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

And again cookie I would have to disagree with you. While you may state that ccleaner is 100% free, they do request a modest fee and I for would prefer to pay the fee if I got the use out of it. Also, I was trying to help tradbike get to the root of the problem. What you have explained is a blanket speedup technique which does not address his original issue. Is it useful? yes. Is it an answer to the original question? No, I don't think so.

Cathal

cookie1977

obrien.cathal wrote: »

I think it's process explorer AllyAll it can be downloaded here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

And again cookie I would have to disagree with you. While you may state that ccleaner is 100% free, they do request a modest fee and I for would prefer to pay the fee if I got the use out of it. Also, I was trying to help tradbike get to the root of the problem. What you have explained is a blanket speedup technique which does not address his original issue. Is it useful? yes. Is it an answer to the original question? No, I don't think so.

Cathal

Ccleaner is 100% free and you can donate if you like although it's not required. If the op has a lot of start up programs on their pc and they list them we can tell them what ones are usefull, useless, suspect malware etc...

cookie1977

cookie1977 wrote: »

Ccleaner is 100% free and you can donate if you like although it's not required. If the op has a lot of start up programs on their pc and they list them we can tell them what ones are usefull, useless, suspect malware etc...

Actually the only thing for sale on ccleaner is 1 year priorty support packages. And might I add is microsoft certified!

Tradbike

Heya everyone,

Just wanted to say thanks so much to everyone who's been helping me out - there'd be clumps of my hair sitting on the ground right now otherwise. So dar I have tried

running malwarebytes - originally 18 infected items but gone now (and no change in performance unfortunately)
updating firefox to 4
running cccleaner & removing all the stuff they recommended

and no changes

here's a list of all my start up programmes, does anything here look sussed to you guys? Do laptops react badly to people swearing at them out of frustration and threatening them with a hammer?

Overheal

Windows Defender is on? alongside AVG?

cookie1977

What I personally think you dont need:
igfxtray.exe
hkcmd.exe
igfxpers.exe
googleupdate.exe
jusched.exe
adobeARM.exe
Reader_sl.exe
applesyncnotifier.exe
googleEULALauncher.exe IE PA
ituneshelper.exe
QTTask.exe* -atboottime
realsched.exe

On another note I'd uninstall real player and install vlc player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ I'd uninstall adobe reader too and I prefer PDF-Xchange viewer http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer (both these apps are free for life) There are many other pdf viewers but i prefer this one although they are all way better then adobe's viewer. I dont like uniblue registry cleaner. I'd uninstall that and just use ccleaner for the same purpose. Do you share media (music video) between different computers or games consoles? If not you can delete wmpnscfg.exe too. As I'd said before have a look at blackviper.com site for setting up services/processes under his "safe" setting as this could also help you. FYI my pc has 4 items in startup:
bdagent.exe (bitdefender antivirus)
Aerofoil.exe (power saving app)
Google calander sync.exe (Syncs outlook calander with google calendar)
Launchy.exe (tin program for quick launching apps/files etc)

This is my personal opinion as others may disagree with me. I also dont think having windows defender alongside AVG is a problem but you could disable windows defender and just use periodic manual scans of malwarebytes instead of having windows defender always running in the background. There's other programs I could suggest removing but I'm not sure what your setup is so dont want to cause potential problems for you.

Allyall

Hi,

Red ones i'd stop, and Green ones are "Craplets".

"Craplets" are small programs or applets that your laptop manufacturer has loaded to supposedly make your laptop run smoother. I personally don't think they do.
I might also stop ehtray.exe (Windows media centre) if you don't use it that often.
and RegistryBooster.

The craplets can all be stopped, no problem, you don't have to delete them. If you realise on reboot, that something you use quite regularly is gone, just go back in, and right click on it, and start process, also re-enable it in startup.

All the other ones you have stopped already, are processes i would have also stopped.

Overheal

I like that term, Craplets.

And it's true: if you were to install a clean, retail copy of Windows 7, it would have none of that ****, and it would run just fine.

obrien.cathal

I stand corrected. CCleaner is the balls (which is a good thing)

Cathal

Overheal

It's the balls And the hair on said balls.

cookie1977

obrien.cathal wrote: »

I stand corrected. CCleaner is the balls (which is a good thing)

Cathal

Indeed it is