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

2012-12-08T21:59:13+00:00

Using Windows Vista (all flavors), restarting your system will probably fix it. I believe this to be connected with peripheral programs (like Macromedia Flash) that require periodic registry startup entry changes.
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Anonymous

2012-11-08T07:01:17+00:00

In Brief; I just bought this new Laptop. It's a Toshiba, Windows 7 (32 Bytes) with Dual Core and AMD Radeon Graphics. RAM 4 GB, and I was just watching Youtube on Firefox and thattt Happened, like the computer was getting slow and its actually not just youtube, it can be any other website then the NT Kernel starts using you CPU and Mine is 30-40% usage and it won't go away I actually read other sites also but everybody has a different opinion and it really bothers me that Not even Microsoft or Windows 7 techs know not what that is exactly. But Anyways, just felt like sharing my equipment details as gen Info.
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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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