Windows 7 has High CPU Usage and slow performance

dbcii,

 do you know what update this came down in? got a KB number??

  Pisces

Jack,

In my situation it started around the 13 of last month when I replaced a hard drive, so prior to that I was using Yahoo messenger and YTunnelPro and Norton's Internet Security 2011, quite normally, albeit earler versions. Last night I was in my chat room, with Messenger and Ytunnel Pro running but this time I had Task Manager open. Everytime my CPU stated to increase, I ended "audiodg.exe" process, and all came back to normal. A crude fix but it worked instead of hanging and rebooting, with very little loss of sound. That is why I dismissed Norton's in the descussion with Gerry as I had been using Norton for 11 years,  prior to this happening. I have also been through all the KB updates,done a quick read on what they do and have ?'d 1 out of 13 that could be an issue. As it started "audiodg.exe", then "Yahoo Messanger.exe" and also once "System Mechanics.exe", all of these programs I have been using for a fair while. SM10 this only happens when it is optimising the hard drive.

I am running my PC on a selective startup so I do have Adobe Reader unchecked, back in the string I read "brccmetl.exe" could be a suspect which is a Conrtol Centre for Brother Printers. I also us a Nvidia graphics card, with no problems.

My Desktop I built Myself a 32 bit system, but it also happens on my Acer Aspire 5742 with an i5 processor and a 64 bit system both Windows 7 Home Premium, and both running the same software as in Norton's Internet Security 2011, Malware Bytes in protection mode and System Mechanics 10.5, and same versions on Mesenger and YtunnelPro.

As far as I am aware people still running XP don't experience this issue, as audiodg.exe wasn't in that OS.

  Pisces

I had the same problem. I used the Resource Monitor (accessible from the Performance tab of Task Manager) to identify the culprit. In my case, it was Adobe Acrobat. I quick Internet search revealed others with the same problem that was resolved by deleting the files in an Acrobat temporary file.

Yesterday, an associate was having the same problem. His dual core was pegged frequently at 100%.Rebooting brought is back to normal performance. Still, he found himself rebooting 3-4 times per day.  Again using Resource Monitor, we found the problem in his case was Kapersky antivirus. Uninstalling Kapersky resolved his performance problem. He's trying a different AV solution now.

FWIW, I'm running NVIDIA display adapter and software on two systems, both Dell notebooks, and I have not experienced any peformance issues related to NVIDIA.

I guess the take away from this is that there can be several culprits causing hig CPU usage. Perhaps Resource Monitor can help identify the problem.

Jack

Update on my workaround, posted upthread on July 8 ago. Brief background - I went through much the same as other posters, removing this and that apparent culprit, only to have something else seem to start hogging CPU. Eventually I tumbled to the fact that the problem ALWAYS starts when the system is allowed to go into "hibernate" mode. When it resumes, the cpu usage shoots to 100% and stays there until the system is rebooted. This is repeatable. I changed my power saving settings so the system never hibernates and the problem never recurred for several weeks. A week or so ago ago it came back. I checked power settings, and sure enough, they were back to the default of hibernate after x amount of time idle. An MS upgrade had been installed the night before, btw. I reset to "never sleep" and it has not recurred since. The issue is with an MS system module that manages the hardware halmacpi.dll (hardware abstraction layer). It goes nuts and babbles, issuing jillions of unprocessed interrupts, flooding the cpu. It MAY be that a peripheral device is the root cause, due to some incompatibility, but in my opinion the halmacpi.dll is bad code - it should have a means of ignoring something it can't deal with. BTW, the problem started immediately after another automatic MS update of - you guessed it - the halmacpi.dll This workaround is ironclad in my situation. Try it. Editorial comment: There are far too many suggestions in this thread that assume people are idiots who use the wrong products and don't know their **** from first base. Reminds me of "real programmers don't use PASCAL." They take the position that it could not POSSIBLY be a fault in the OS, so you stupid users MUST be doing something idiotic. They suggest chasing red herrings you've already posted that you already did. Advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. So take suggestions with a big grain of salt, particularly when the tone is condescending.