Windows 7 has High CPU Usage and slow performance

Anonymous
2009-11-18T04:59:29+00:00

Hello all,

I've searched the forums, but was unable to find anything relevant.  I recently upgraded to Windows 7 from Vista.  It was running fine for about a week then all of a sudden everything started running very slow.  I checked the the processes tab in task manager and I am constantly running at 70-80% CPU usage.  I think this is very high considering the computer is only a few months old.  It seems like others are having this problem as well, but no real solutions.

I have turned off file indexing as well as disabled the HD audio device. 

Please help!

Here are my hardware specs:

AMD 9550 Quad-Core

64-bit

6GB Ram

Thank you in advance for your help.  I am ready to toss this thing from my second story window.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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Anonymous
2010-01-02T19:29:42+00:00

I think the answer might be the Windows Media Player and Windows Media Network Sharing Services as zxypher suggested.  The fix for that is to adjust were the Windows Media Player services search for media files. 

It seems to be a bad problem for me as well upgrading from Vista to Windows 7.  The default search location for media is set to C:\Users\ instead of down in the My Music folders.

Go into Media Player.  From the menu -> File -> Manage libraries -> select each library (music, video, pictures, recorded tv [if you have]) and check the paths that it is managing and make sure it is not too close to the root of the C: drive.  For example, it should be something like c:\users\Jim\Music and c:\users\Public\Music BUT NOT **** c:\users as they will cause the whole directory tree to be re-indexed over and over (when you surf the web or change any files in your profile).

If you have multiple users who login to the computer, you may need to repeat the process for each user if all users have added managed folders which are actively changing on a regular basis.

If this is your issue and you do it correctly, then the high CPU should drop in minutes (or seconds down to nothing).

This is the CORRECT way to adjust the WMNSS/WMPNetwk.exe process issues.

A little more information can be found here:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/2fe4901b-2eaf-4a99-b487-e6a6213b10b3/

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-04-13T18:13:07+00:00

    If you had high CPU usage that was affected by the presence or absence of a secondary monitor, it would seem to be related to some program you had running that would check this, or perhaps the video driver.

    Did you track the CPU usage back to a particular process?

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-04-13T17:16:56+00:00

    I have a similar problem. Did lots of what people suggest on this forum, nothing worked. Until I unplugged all external devices, including a second monitor. Turned out that it is the monitor that causes the problem. As long as I don't use the second monitor everything is fine.

    I am using a Dell Precision 6400 notebook with an NVIDIA Quattro 2700M videocard.

    Playing with the settings of the NVIDIA driver didn't help.

    Any ideas? Thanks a lot.

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-03-31T21:07:50+00:00

    If you have hangs, use ADPlus (from Debugger Tools) and create a dump of the hanging program and open it in WinDbg and run !analyze -v -hang and look what is hanging ;)

    "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-03-31T12:12:57+00:00

    I've had similar problems with high CPU spikes, a lot of disk activity and even random freezing of the whole desktop. This annoying threesome is often supplemented with 'not responding' messages accross multiple software, including Microsoft Office 2007.

    It seems from my scans of the Microsoft Forum that the number of people suffering from ‘high CPU usage’ and the  'locking' and 'not responding' problems are growing. Here are  a few of them that are obvious, by their title alone.

    I suspect that there are a lot more people who suffer from these problems who haven’t found these links as yet or just haven’t bothered to post at all.

    Windows 7 and the 'not responding problem'

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/a5c4ee7a-abad-4a47-b68f-5c62dd015210

    Computer occassionaly freezes after being idle for a while

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/4df56e5e-607d-4349-833a-cd22e873b4c0

    Windows 7 "Windows Explorer Has Stopped Working." Annoying Problem, Very common Among Win7 Users

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7files/thread/291c0945-c41f-4c8b-bca1-6b6d0836f62a

    Random freezes with windows 7

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7repair/thread/85cad5d1-dace-415d-9b06-5c609209e232

    Windows Explorer Not Responding in 7

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/876b941b-082e-4528-8acc-e5277a349feb

    C:\system volume information] causing disk thrash and unusable windows 7 instance

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/43ea5fde-0d1e-455d-b6d8-ae33f516d121

    Windows 7 Keeps crashing

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/3fb24631-e874-4e53-b713-9edaa0600897

    Slow performance and windows issues on 64bit

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/18455d84-09cd-4bec-8b13-fc0c7c9fedd4

    Windows 7 momentarily hangs

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/679f773a-dca4-411c-b38f-b01296c85c6f

    Windows 7 32 bit freeze

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/03442d6f-5b7a-45cb-b2bd-2060f85aaa32

    The only way I've found to get this under control is to disable the ‘Desktop Window Manager Session Manager’ Service but this puts Windows 7 into an original Windows 3.1 look (it disables all the flashy effects of Windows 7). Even this dramatic step still produces some short hangs.

    As one of my other posts states the only stable set up is Windows Safe Mode.

    http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7performance/thread/a5c4ee7a-abad-4a47-b68f-5c62dd015210

    Obviously, Safe Mode is not a good solution especially as I paid good money for this flagship product. Let’s hope that the lads at Microsoft can soon find a workable fix for all these problems.

    Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9400 @2.66Ghz

    4GB DDR2 RAM

    Nvidia GeForce 9600GT 1024MB GT graphics card

    Samsung 1 TB Hard Drive (Windows 7 64 bit)

    Western Digital 500 GB Hard Drive (Windows Vista 32 bit)

    Motherboard: Asus PSN-D

    Window 7 Home 64 bit was a clean install on a new 1 TB hard drive

    Dual boot with Windows 7 being the default Operatiing System

    Windows Experience Index: 5.9 (CPU: 7.2 - Memory: 7.2 - Graphics: 6.8 - Gaming Graphics 6.8 - HDD: 5.9)

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