High CPU usage from simple programs on powerful machine

[OGSirbe]

Hello all,

I'll cut right to the chase....I have a simple dell work computer at my job and it is currently running better than my 2.5k rig! Really getting me upset. So at home I have 4690K ocD to 4.4g and I'm running SLI 980s. I notice that my CPU usage jumps from 10-13% when idle to 89-90% when I open Chrome and 100% when I open 1 stream on twitch (on medium quality too!). I open my resource manager to see what is killing my cpu and it looks like AVASTSVC.exe is absolutely killing my cpu usage along with Chrome itself. Like I said...at work I have a basic Dell and it can run multiple chrome tabs, while streaming 2 twitch streams, youtubing, and running work programs while not slowing down and the cpu usage is only at roughly 75%. Does anyone have any explanation to this? Basically my cpu usage jumps extremely high when I use simply programs.

 

[Skeefers]

I had an issue similar to this recently, and it was being caused by Windows Update. Are you using Windows 7 by any chance?

 

[OGSirbe]

I had an issue similar to this recently, and it was being caused by Windows Update. Are you using Windows 7 by any chance?

Yes I am using Win 7. Also Chrome seems to be running extremely slow...any chance you had the same issue?

 

[Skeefers]

Yep, sure did. Issue is that Windows Update is basically filling up your RAM by not releasing data from it when it's finished using it; this means that left alone long enough all of your RAM will be reserved for WU, so nothing else can use it. When it starts to happen, follow these steps to clear it out:

1. Press Windows Key+r to open the Run command window
2. Type "services.msc" without the quotes, and press Enter
3. Scroll down the list until you see "Windows Update"
4. Right click on it, and select "Restart"

This should resolve it temporarily, but eventually it will bog you down again. There's a patch that should be applied by Windows Update to fix it (took maybe 2-3 weeks after I started having the problem before I got it), so once you get that the issue will stop. If this ends up not being the same issue you're having (i.e. my little temp fix doesn't work), let me know so I can try to help you figure it out.