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

2011-10-02T22:54:36+00:00

I have a similar problem but only lose between 60-70% of my CPU. I've narrowed it down to when explorer 9.0 is running. It seems to be when a lot of tabs have been open for a long time, but I haven't tested for that yet.
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Anonymous

2011-10-09T10:18:23+00:00

I have a similar problem which cause system shutting down,i am not sure,whatever,while I wanna know whether this image/system has so many thread--more than 130.
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Anonymous

2011-10-21T16:17:10+00:00

As the others, CPU usage skyrocketed earlier this week....and now adding a new twist...I log in to Windows...the screen populates with the normal background and icons...it recognizes Norton 360, Spybot...but not the motherboard...and then goes blank/black....and a command to reboot (along with additional verbiage)....so I manually turn off...only to repeat itself again...and I am basically locked out. I had just ran the full scan on Norton and it found nothing, but as with the others I see the NT Kernel & System running 130 threads and CPU usage is at ot near the limit (AMD quad core)....any ideas would be greatly appreciated...
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