Running hot after update

[radji]

Strange behavior. After running the latest batch of updates, my SP4 will run hot ONLY when the screen is off. CPU maxes out at 100%, so says my CPU monitor graph. Happens on both battery and AC power. I can't get the screen to turn on fast enough to see what process(es) are grinding.

EDIT: It's the system process. But why would the system process be using so much CPU when the screen is off?

 

[GreyFox7]

Strange behavior. After running the latest batch of updates, my SP4 will run hot ONLY when the screen is off. CPU maxes out at 100%, so says my CPU monitor graph. Happens on both battery and AC power. I can't get the screen to turn on fast enough to see what process(es) are grinding.

EDIT: It's the system process. But why would the system process be using so much CPU when the screen is off?

I have seen a recurring problem with two processes System and System Interrupts using high CPU at times. It seems the only recourse is to reboot. Not sure if that the same issue you are seeing or not. One would hope all that telemetry data to Microsoft leads to this being fixed but don't hold your breath. The issue has been happening since 1703, was still present in 1709 and it's still here in 1803++.

 

[radji]

Weird, since it just started on my SP4 with this last update.

 

[GreyFox7]

Post a screen shot of Task Manager processes tab sorted by CPU high to low and the Processes Tab.

 

[radji]

 

[radji]

Task Manager is probably not a good indicator since the system process only runs high when the screen is off. I know it is though because of my CPU monitor (and the fans kick into high).

 

[GreyFox7]

I would run a scan with Malwarebytes. If that's clean then you need to set up some monitoring with Performance Monitor to see what is going on. This can capture system counters to a file then it can be looked at in detail although even short interactive captures can be helpful narrowing down the things to focus on.

depending on how long this has been occurring is it possible it's just a system maintenance task? Or it could be Bitcoin Mining as an example. A System maintenance task or AV scan would wrap up and things would return to normal although sometimes it might get stuck on a file. Other things that could be happening are problems with Google drive sync etc.

Do you see Network activity? Disk activity? GPU activity? Or is it only CPU? Even Task Manager and Resource Manager Graphs will show recent activity to help zero in on what's happening.

 

[radji]

Network and disk monitor show idle when the screen is off. And I turned off Kaspersky just for diagnostics sake, since that is usually the culprit. Still the CPU goes high when the screen is off. Left the machine sit with the screen off all night and this morning the CPU was still running high. I will do a Malwarebyte scan today. How should I configure Performance Monitor to capture the info needed?

 

[radji]

Malwarebytes scan showed nothing. Need instructions on how to setup performance monitor to capture the info I need.

 

[radji]

So I can't find any AV (shut it all off) or system maintenance task that is running in the background. I don't think any malware is running either since Malwarebytes did not turn up anything in it's search.

 

[radji]

Process explorer says its the ACPI.sys driver thats running up the System process. Apparently this is a known issue. Any workarounds present?