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Starting yesterday, I have a very odd problem on my Windows 10 desktop-- my CPU is constantly running at 100% (according to Task Manager), and it isn't throttling down. Because of this, it's constantly running at 3.3 GHz and the temperatures are rising to the point where the fans kick in at full force. If I go into the Windows power settings screen and manually change the processor power maximum to 50%, then it's capped at 50% frequency (~1.5 GHz), but it never goes below the maximum possible frequency.
The weird thing is, when I look at the process list, there isn't really anything obvious that's triggering it. None of the processes are abnormal, and though the process CPU percentages do add up to 100%, it doesn't make sense to me that each individual process is taking up as much CPU as Task Manager says it is. Everything seems to be "using" a significantly higher amount of CPU resources than it normally does.
As an attempt to diagnose the problem, I've also tried using Process Explorer. The really weird thing is that Process Explorer shows only 1-2% usage when idle, with the System Idle Process taking up the remaining ~98% as I would expect. Again, nothing looks out of the ordinary in the process list, but the processes are showing the levels of activity I would expect in Process Explorer.
I've already run both Windows Defender and Malware Bytes (a virus was my first guess), but nothing has turned up yet.
This same issue also occurs in Safe Mode, so I'm guessing that it's more along the lines of something to do with Windows itself...
So, to recap:
- Windows 10 Desktop
- Intel 970, 3.3 GHz, 6 cores
- Task manager and resource monitor graphs shows 100% usage total
- No individual process is taking up significant resources in the resource monitor list
- CPU is not throttling down automatically based on the dynamic load, causing high temperatures and the fan to kick in
- Process Explorer is only showing 1-2% CPU usage
Before I go uninstalling everything, how would I figure out what's causing the issue if nothing weird is showing up in Task Manager or Process Explorer?
Andrew M
Posted 2016-04-02T17:07:56.073
Reputation: 705
1Is hyper-v enabled? – magicandre1981 – 2016-04-02T17:40:25.113
No, it's not enabled – Andrew M – 2016-04-02T17:43:13.023
1Make sure your Task Manager is set to 'Show Processes from All Users'. Otherwise you will never see which process does that. – Aganju – 2016-04-02T18:13:09.617
1I know where the checkbox is in older versions of Windows, but is there one for Windows 10? Also, it's worth noting I just tried rebooting in safe mode and the CPU is still at 100% and not throttling. – Andrew M – 2016-04-02T18:14:23.723
An odd thing along these lines, is IntelRST "dynamic storage acceleration" , which instead of the cpu sleeping through disk activity it clocks it up. You would still have to have disk activity going on, which I am sure the OS can oblige doing that unnessisarily :-). Because even a flood of disk activity with proper drivers and all would not be huge processing percentage, the DSA being on would get it to clock high, That would not explain any high heat, from work being done, just high clocks, when the disk is working. Also obvious Bios settings like intel speed step being off – Psycogeek – 2016-04-03T10:29:03.993