NT Kernel & System using 100% of CPU

Anonymous
2009-04-02T00:19:32+00:00

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?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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Anonymous
2009-07-06T17:17:59+00:00

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
2009-04-02T10:03:09+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2012-06-19T00:13:52+00:00

    I found a post about this problem with the ntkrnl and their solution was to stop some services in windows. If you have the problem, you should maybe check it out.

    It's a bit old but it should work

    http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f217/nt-kernel-and-system-100-cpu-594924.html

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-08-10T18:34:08+00:00

    I'd just like to add my own experience to this discussion.

    Quick explanation and fix:

    In short it was caused by the downloads window in firefox, clearing the downloads list and rebooting solved it.

    Bit more lengthy explanation of why I was looking for a solution:

    I recently noticed I had the same issue with NT Kernel & System using my cpu a bit too much. It was't that bad, at most only 1 thread on my i7 cpu but because I run boinc gpu projects and like to monitor how they perform it becomes quite noticable when cpu cycles go missing.

    I noticed the problem would not always appear but I had no idea what I did to cause it, searching the web didn't help much so eventually I resorted to just slowly trying out different things. Doing this I nailed the issue down to opening the "downloads" window in firefox (using version 14.01 at this moment).

    To complely fix the problem I had I simply cleared the downloads list and after a reboot the problem hasn't returned (yet). Hopefully this will help others who may be scratching their head trying to figure out what is causing it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-09-09T23:09:40+00:00

    I just figured out what was causing my PC to use the System process continuously - it was the new Sapphire HD5450 graphics card I installed.  This is not a very high spec card.  Nonetheless, I took it out and - voila - the problem is solved.  I figure it has something to do with the Sapphire driver.  Doesn't look like it is Microsoft's fault.

    for my system, it turned out to be my MB possibly failing.  When I switched to a new motherboard (keeping the same hardware and software otherwise), the problem went away.

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