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

2010-04-25T14:16:04+00:00

High Kernel usage is high DPC or Interrupts usage.

Follow my guide here :

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=140263

to see which drive is causing it.

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

2010-04-24T08:05:37+00:00

I don't know if this help anyone. I was having this problem. I first started noticing it when I tried to do a video encode job (with Handbrake). As long as I didn't do any hardcore task (such as web browsing or MS Word), my system was fine. But as soon as I played a game or did some other CPU intense task, I would get the 100% CPU NT kernel. Since only intense jobs would cause this problem, I thought it was an overheating problem. but my CPU temps seemed fine. So i thought maybe my video card or my tv tuner card was the culprit. but removing them didn't solve the problem.

scanning for rootkits, viruses, spyware, etc did not find anything major. Wiping my system and reinstalling the OS did not solve the problem. removing devices did not fix the problem. I was at wit's end.

So I thought maybe it was a hardware problem. So I replaced my motherboard with a new one from a reputable higher quality brand. And the problem was gone. Apparently, it had to do with overheating of some kind. My friend thinks it was a capacitor problem.
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