Member Avatar for ch1p

Hey my CPU usage jumps and spikes alot to 100% will stay there a bit then come back down to zero. I am using an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ on a ASUS A7N8X board. ANY HELP PLEASE?

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Brief CPU spikes to 100% can be normal under Windows; what matters is whether the load is sustained or affects responsiveness. Thread starter reported frequent spikes, and replies from , and touched on the usual possibilities: normal short bursts, background scans, and the need to track processes over time. The notes below give safe, verifiable diagnostics and cautions that avoid risky actions.

A useful starting point is the built-in Task Manager: enable "Show processes from all users" and add the "CPU Time" column to see cumulative usage since each process started; sorting by CPU exposes immediate offenders. For deeper analysis, Microsoft Sysinternals Process Explorer shows per-process CPU time, thread-level activity and loaded DLLs. To capture behavior over minutes, use Performance Monitor (perfmon.exe) and add the Process\% Processor Time counter sampled every 1–5 seconds and logged to a file for later review.

's observation about lsass.exe needs special caution. lsass.exe is the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service; terminating it forces a system shutdown and can cause data loss, so it must not be killed. Persistent CPU or memory growth in lsass.exe can result from a leaking service, a third-party authentication provider, or malware. Inspect lsass.exe's loaded modules with Process Explorer, review the System and Application event logs for related errors, run sfc /scannow, and perform up-to-date antivirus/anti-spyware scans before making changes.

A practical isolation approach is a clean boot (use msconfig to disable non-Microsoft services/startup items, then re-enable in small groups) to find the offending component. If "System Interrupts" shows steady CPU, suspect driver or hardware problems and consider updating chipset/network drivers or testing memory and NIC hardware. Collecting a short log of top CPU consumers over a few minutes normally reveals the root cause without risky guessing.

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Member Avatar for alc6379

Just so you know, 100% CPU usage is not bad-- it's not like a temperature gauge on a car or anything! Just sitting at my idle Windows XP Pro system, I can watch the CPU usage spike up for several seconds to 100%, but it doesn't detriment my computing experience.

What type of applications are you running? Have you checked for viruses or spyware? Additionally, does this 100% CPU usage affect anything? If it doesn't, then I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Member Avatar for jackster

could be some dodgy software.. or when a virus scan is taking place... do u have a firewall.. if not.. you might be an open relay spamming the world for the benifit for a spammer...

although running at 100% does not harm anything... it means that your computer is doing someing..

open task manager..a nd go to prcoesses.. can you tell me what processes are running above 0%, their names and % of cpu and memory size

what antivirus/spyware spoftware do u use?

Member Avatar for Otoko

could be some dodgy software.. or when a virus scan is taking place... do u have a firewall.. if not.. you might be an open relay spamming the world for the benifit for a spammer...

although running at 100% does not harm anything... it means that your computer is doing someing..

open task manager..a nd go to prcoesses.. can you tell me what processes are running above 0%, their names and % of cpu and memory size

what antivirus/spyware spoftware do u use?

[IMG]http://img43.exs.cx/img43/5818/usage.jpg[/IMG]

Can anyone help with this?

Current specs at P4 2.8e/1gb/xpp. No heavy apps running but cpu usage seem high at 40% - 60%. All normal processes but lsass.exe seems to taking up memory at 4byte/sec. Windows were updated.

Thanks..

Member Avatar for kc0arf

Hello,

What you might need is a means to track the processes over time, very similar to Unix/Linux TOP command, that will show you how much CPU time is consumed since the computer was booted. Your screen above shows an instant snapshot, but looking at it, we cannot see how much total time was "eaten".

Not sure where you could find such a utility. But I used TOP on my Mac OS X computer, and found that my Palm Desktop was rather greedy. It now only runs when I need it.

Christian

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