Maintenance :: Windows Defender Running High CPU When System Idle
Jul 2, 2013
After around 5 minutes of my system sitting idle, MsMpEng.exe kicks in running about 50% CPU and keeps running until I start using my laptop again. How to stop it doing it.
I'm setting up a new laptop running Windows 8.1. I keep finding the Windows Media Network Sharing Service keeps starting up when the PC is otherwise idle and running at 90% + CPU load for long periods. There is no demand for media streaming when the process is running.
What is this process for? Can I disable it or reconfigure it to reduce the CPU load?
I just bought a brand new Lenovo U310 Touch and so far I absolutely love it. The only thing I noticed that struck me as odd is that when I look in Task Manager it shows that I am using around 60% of my available memory, but there are no processes taking up anywhere near that much. I also have a desktop I built and its memory usage is nominal when idle so I know this isn't a "standard feature" or anything.
EDIT (5/4/13) - Finally figured it out, it was the ExpressCache program, used a couple tutorials to isolate where the memory leak was and from there I found it was in the running files of ExpressCache, I just went to Uninstall Programs, hit "Repair" on the program and now everything is all nice and happy, no more memory leak.
My task manager is showing an unusually high CPU usage by the system, anywhere between 20-30% when the computer is idling. I've run the sfc /scannow utility and it found some corruptions, which were then fixed by the DISM utility. However the task manager is still showing that super high CPU usage and no amount of restarts is changing anything. I've attached an image of my task manager.
Basically when I start my laptop everything is good for a while when suddenly the CPU usage goes high because of System Interrupts (~25%) and System (~12%). I have tried using LatencyMon to track down the problem and it used to give me alerting messages but now it gives me messages that are all green and nice ("Your system appears to be handling(...)").
NOTE: My drivers ARE up-to-date, but I am not sure my BIOS is. I don't really know how to update the BIOS though, it's a really weird model I have here, that has become obsolete.
*update1* Upon thinking that it might be the wireless driver or the network driver I disabled both, but it didn't drop the CPU usage
*update2*Now I get disconnected from the internet randomly... it may be the wi-fi driver after all
I've noticed that when I leave my pc for some time and the screen savers come on, then the screens go blank (my machine doesn't sleep or hibernate) when I use the pc again I can see that during the time the monitors had turned off, the CPU usage was at or above 50% ? When I use the computer after that, watching movies, photoshop etc the cpu usage is much less than that!
As soon as I start an application (Cadence Allegro PCB Designer 16.5 but I don't think it's relevant) my CPU usage gets to the roof and stays there long after I killed the application and I believe I every associated process. The CPU usage is so high that the battery will be drained after about 45 minutes (It usually last about 3 hours).
According to my task manager the responsible is "Service Host: Local System (Network Restricted)". As a matter of fact, preventing the executable from accessing the network sort of solves the issue. I don't believe I need that executable to access the network but I'd like to understand what kind of network service can consume that much CPU (was actually affraid of overheating) and to know if there's a more appropriate way to solve this.
Over a month ago, I noticed that my system had started to become very slow, taking a long time to switch between apps, or between tabs in Chrome (even with only a few tabs open).
I've constantly had Resource Monitor open to try and track down the source of the problem. Initially, I thought this was a problem with Chrome or my pagefile, because Chrome was often at/near the top of Disk Activity, manipulating pagefile.sys. However, it seems like the amount of data being manipulated isn't very large; typically well below 1 MB/sec. I tried moving my pagefile to a secondary hard drive to no effect.
I've downloaded and run multiple programs to check hard drive health, and none of them have found any problems. I'm not talking about simple S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics, but in-depth scans.
Thinking that it might be a problem with Windows 7 at the time, I wiped the drive and installed Windows 8.1. I installed the latest motherboard drivers and disabled Windows search and file indexing. The problem remains. The fact that the problem persists after wiping the drive had me thinking it's likely a hardware problem. Alas, various hard drive scanners haven't found a problem.
I have 8GB of memory; rarely is more than 4GB ever in use. Both of my hard drives have plenty of free space (400+ GB each).
Recently I got problems when running SFC or DISM to repair my system. As far as I know it concerns the shortcuts in the folder Administrative Tools, there I changed under Properties the Run option to Maximised Windows and since then SFC and DISM have shown this error that the services are unable to download the proper source files (they admonish a mismatch I cannot correct).
I am running a Windows 8.1 Update 1 system without the Pro version, so I have no access to its exclusive features. I attach the corresponding log files after a run of DISM and SFC for more infos.
when i leave my system in idle for an hour or two, it reboots without any BSOD, or any error messages. My rig is 5 year-old, and always worked perfectly with Windows 7, without any strange issues.
When i'm working, Win 8.1 works absolutely perfect for long long hours.. rendering video, playing games etc.. i never found a BSOD or random reboot.I did the following to try to solve this problem, without success:
- Changing my PSU.
- Changing the Win 8 energy plan to Maximum Performance (hard disks never turn off)
- Memtest for 16+ hours, without any error.
My guess is there are some Windows 8.1 feature that doesn't fit well with my mobo, but i can't find it. I have also the same version of Win 8.1 installed in another older rig, and works 100% perfect during days (working and idle).This is my problematic rig:
Gigabyte P55-A UD6, BIOS F12c Beta (the last available from Gigabyte) G-Skill Ripjaws DDR3 2000 8Gb (2x4Gb) Intel Core i7 860 Lynnfield Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 Corsair Force 3 180 Gb (firmware updated) Creative X-Fi Titanium
I purchased my HP laptop back in 2009. It came installed with Windows 7. It has an Intel quad-core processor and 8 gigs of RAM. I upgraded to Windows 8.1, and since then my laptop's fan has been running high and hot constantly. It did not behave this way before I upgraded the OS. The fan usually acts up when I have 2 or more things running on the laptop.
I had the idle & regular maintenance tasks disabled but they always re-enabled themselves. In a fit of madness I ended up deleting them but now when I open a folder with videos or images the thumbnails always display in a slow staggered way every time from left to right, If I then exit the folder & go back in they do the same again. It's almost like they are not being cached at all & are having to be redrawn every time.
The only change I have made to my system is remove Comodo firewall & install Private Firewall & delete the idle & regular maintenance tasks.
In windows 8 my Core i5 3750K CPU does not reduce its clock-speed when idle. As I run an OC of 4,3Ghz, it gets pretty hot in idle, allthough it do reduce vCore a little.
Dualbooting with Windows 7, and there the cpu clocks down just fine works, so not a BIOS problem.
Seems to have some small HW issues with Windows 8. CPU at full speed and really slow USB3 performance.
Having tried unsuccessfully to program Task Scheduler (in 8.1), I found at the above site in Windows 7 forums a shortcut for a script which supposedly simplifies manual creation of a System Restore point. However when I use it the Restore Point created with the script carries the notation "Install" in the list of Restore Points.
I upgraded my OS to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8 from the store yesterday. Everything seems to be working fine - no lags or freezes, but I noticed that my PC doesn't drop below 30-35% in idle, also it doesn't downclock (balanced power settings) - it used to drop to 0.8ghz in idle and be like 1-4% in idle before the update, and now it's permanent 3.2ghz and over 30% in idle. I noticed that Service Host: Local Services and Service Host: System Services in the task manager are draining over 10% CPU each, something that didn't happen before.
First let me say, I rarely leave my 8.1 system running all night as I generally switch off before bed.
On the FEW occasions I leave the system running all night I always get the "Your computer is low on memory" warning.
For instance, yesterday my software RAID mirror was "Re-synchronizing" and I wanted it to complete syncing so I left it running. NOTHING was running except Disk Manager. I closed down everything else. No browser, no Skype, no directory utility, no paint, no uTorrent....
Sure enough when I woke up this morning there it was....
A few days ago I wanted a couple of torrents to keep downloading so I kept the desktop running. Again NOTHING else was running and in the morning there it was....
I have 16Gb of memory and my pagefile.sys is 42Gb. My OS disc is a 250Gb SSD. I have set my system to hibernate after 5 hours idle. I have set the screen/display to sleep after 30 minutes.
The system isn't asleep when I wake as moving the mouse immediately brings the display back on line. Checking Task Manager shows NO memory hogs.
What I suspect is after 5 hours the hibernation process denies access to memory requests or something?
The strange thing is millions of people on 8.1 must leave their systems running all night but I have seen no mention of this behaviour.
It seems as if my computer is using way too much RAM for some reason. I currently have 6GB of RAM installed. As soon as I start my computer up, I'm greeted with this warning:
So I decided to open up task manager and see exactly how much RAM I'm really using:
No process is using up any amount of RAM to come close the above number. The most RAM using is 70mb or so from Google Chrome while typing this post. Clicking on the performance tab of task manager gives me this information:
I haven't downloaded anything recently. I had this exact problem a few weeks ago and a system restore fixed it but I'm not wanting to wait on the computer to restore again or for this problem to just come back again. I'm running Windows 8 on a Toshiba Satellite L875D-S7332.
I am having problems with my memory it has jumped to 89% and stays there. I tried to restart i looked at the processes it seems that non-paged tools is taking the most. I used RamMAP tool to find this problem.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been getting high disk usage on my computer, causing it to run extremely slowly.
Just after I took the attached screenshot, my System went down to around 6MB/s and the "Service Host: Local System (Network Restricted)" jumped to around 16MB/s Looking in resource monitor the main things causing the high read speed are:
'rundll32.exe' and 'ccsvchst.exe' and one just called 'System'
I recently installed Windows 8.1 on my Inspiron 7520 and I noticed that during the startup the disk usage is around 98/99% of my Samsung SSD 840 Pro 120gb.
I saw a lot of posts where the users complain that, during this high usage of the disk, apps don't open, the system freezes around 5 minutes and after that, there are random high usages, even on idle. But in my case this high usage lasts only few seconds (around 30s), I can open some apps with no problems and never happens again on idle, only if I restart Explorer.exe. If I restart it, it happens all again.
My question is : Is it normal? The high usage only on startup? My only worry is mess up with my SSD due this usage.
On Performance Monitor, the process which writes a lot is System. I disabled every 3rd party app on startup.
I have a new laptop windows 8.1 (64bit) 8gb RAM i7 processor which should be sufficient for the software I use. However on start-up my memory is already at around 80% and stays like that.
The most seems to be caused by servicehost (network restricted) (11) another program is IAStorDataSvc (32bits) even after i updated Intel Rapid Storage it still seems to take some memory. (My system settings are in Dutch but I guess it's pretty much the same as in English).
What could be the cause of the massive memory use?
I have recently discovered that my laptop cooler was going crazy and I didn't knew why, then I started Task Manager and there it was "Windows host process (Rundll32) eating 30% of the cpu.
Notebook specs: Cpu: Intel Core i5 3210m Ram: 8gb ddr3 1600mhz OS: Windows 8.1 x64 pro with the latest update
I found out that windows 8 and windows 8.1 weakness is its latency. For me this problem occurred like 2 months ago (before it didn't happened) , and yes I have messed around with the bios before that happened (now its all set to default ).
Currently I am running Windows 8.1 Update 1 (made a clean install yesterday) latest updates and drivers installed (with a program called DriverEasy) , and I am also running all the default settings in bios currently . I noticed the problem , 2 months ago just like I said before , when I was watching a video on youtube . Since that , I just can't watch some videos anymore with the ANNOYING static/crackling sound , its very annoying .And it also seems that it affects CPU performance and fps drops.Like I said before , I installed Windows 8.1 yesterday , so no minor tweaks have been done to the system .
I have already tried :
-"disabledynamictick" command -Disabling all unused devices in bios -Disabling EIST and C1E (no improvment at all) *-Disabling HPET Mode reduces latency , but pc isn't stable.
Here are my computer specs (its a 4 year old and its really , really bad ):
Here are the screenshots of DPC Latency Checker and Latencymon :
DPC Latency Checker (2minutes):
There are one or two yellow once a while .The values also slightly raise to yellows when I move the mouse , which I think is normal .
Latencymon (2minutes-both pitcures):
The values were raising and falling
The values were raising until I stopped the checking .
My power plan is set at High Performance (when the powerplan was set to Basic , I was getting red spikes in DPC Latency Checker) , and I am running the stock voltage in bios for the cpu 1.28750V.
I realize this might be a hardware related problem , but I am little bit more sure that this is a Windows 8.1 problem hopefully they will fix it in the Update 2 .
Today I noticed that the sound popped , when I started my computer at the windows logo.
After I updated to windows 8.1 (from 8), windows explorer is taking up way more memory than it use to. Windows explorer would only use around 37 MB but now it uses almost 300 MB and it shows through poor computer performance. I have tried ending the process and restarting it but sometimes it works and other times it doesn't.
In the future I'm planning to build a new computer to replace this old hunk of junk and I'm curious as to one thing as I'm not entirely sure on this. Just how safe is using the High Performance Power Plan in Windows 8.1?
You see, my current rig is running an old i5 661, normally on the Balanced Power Plan on an old ASUS P7P55D-E Deluxe Motherboard with a GTX 660 and 4GB of RAM on 32-bit Windows 8.1.
But my future plan is to use an i5 4690K with a Corsair H110 All In One Water Cooler for CPU Cooling on a Z97 Motherboard and 8GB of RAM in 64-bit Windows 8.1.
I'm hoping to get quite a bit of performance on this next computer cause hey... I'm planning on using it for gaming and such. But also web browsing and chatting with friends. I hear how High performance is suggested for 'optimising' Windows 8.1 but how much safer is it...
And how much of a performance increase could I possibly see in comparison to the old rig?
I have high usage on my laptop lenovo g580 using windows 8. check task manager and I see cpu memory and disk fluctuating up and down to 3% can go up to 100 at times. When I open google chrome. Watch video or play games. I hear my fan turn on and i think my hard drive and i check task manager and i see the problem happening. I did a virus scan and searched everywhere online. I couldn't seem to find a solution. When I am not using the pc its a stable 3 percent but my memory is at 37 which i barely have anything installed but 1 game and a google chrome.
I have set Defender to do a quick scan in task scheduler for 1 AM. Auto Maintenance is set for 3 AM. I got up this morning to check Defender to verify the newly created quick scan and it was successful but stated it ran at 3 AM. Since I have allowed system to 'wake up' from sleep to do the quick scan, I am afraid the laptop is being awakened at both 1 AM by task scheduler and 3 AM by Auto Maintenance.
It runs as part of Automatic Maintenance, which IIRC runs daily when your computer is idle.