NT Kernel & System using 100% of CPU

Anonymous

Hi,

I just bought a new laptop with Window Vista Basic. The laptop has 3 Gb ram. I was just reading an article on line and then I start to hear the laptop fan running like crazy. then I went to the Resource Monitor and there was an image/program that was using 95% of my cpu and it was my system with description of "NT Kernel & System". It has been going on for over 30mins. Other than restarting the computer, what can I do about this "NT Kernel & System" eating up 95% of my CPU?

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Anonymous

I've been having the same problem on my HP desktop running Vista home for a couple weeks. I read that someone fixed the same problem by updating some hardware firmware, so I opened Resource Monitor and started unplugging all my hardware one at a time. The instant I unplugged my Belkin USB network adapter, NT Kernel & System dropped down to 0% and my computer unfroze entirely. The same adapter has been causing me a lot of grief for months- it wouldn't respond every time my computer came out of standby. I'll be updating the driver and firmware to see if that helps - otherwise that garbage is going in the trash. I recommend disabling/unplugging hardware (especially if you have any with odd behavior) until the problem stops, then replacing or updating that hardware.

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Anonymous

Hello Dtsai,

Thank you for posting. What you just described seems to be some form of mal-ware trying to mascuerade as a legitimate windows service. Windows does have NT Kernel and also System, but they never show up together as one service, program, or file.

I highly recommend that you use your favorite anti-virus and anti-spyware program and do a full scan of your PC.

Please try the scan and let me know if this helps you

Zack

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

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59 additional answers

Anonymous

2011-06-13T03:35:24+00:00

I have uninstalled and deleted the network drivers and restarted the machine. After restarted install the drivers back. Its seems to be OK for now.
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Anonymous

2011-03-24T06:02:21+00:00

I have been having horrible issues with my laptop lately. Games freeze or glitch. The computer runs slow and I often get blue screened. I know something is wrong so I was looking through my processes and noticed NT Kernel & System. I tried to open the file location to see what this process related too and nothing opened, I also tried to open properties and got nothing as well. Has anyone confirmed that this is any type of malware, spyware, or virus?
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Anonymous

2010-09-27T08:59:20+00:00

Hi,

I got lucky! I had the same issue (i have Windows Vista as well) as describe as the original poster & many of you. However, I could not resolve my issue by rebooting my laptop, during shutdown.. it would freeze & not shutdown all the way. After I restarted my PC (by holding down the power button), my problem just came right back.

Another user who replied mentioned something about.. there may we a hardware malfuction, that you may need to restart or reinstall.

This made me think, because right before I noticed my problem, I had inserted a disk (from my digital camera) into the drive. I did not know it at the time, but this caused the "NT Kernel & System" to hog up the CPU. I simply ejected the disk & reinserted it. And WaLLah.. my problem disappeared.

Hope this info was useful! :p
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