High CPU Usage

[chanwolf]

Sorry this is a re-post from Window Vista and did not know there was a CPU section.

Hi I would like to start off by giving an overview of this situation. This all began when I updated my GPU drivers, and ran a disk defrag after I restarted my computer. When I got back into my computer everything was normal nothing seem's "laggy." Then I proceed to play a game called Maplestory , my computer was doing fine. Then I got horrible FPS lag, could not move that much. I then called it quits on maplestory and thought my computer just couldn't handle it. I exit the game and it still felt weird. It took over 15 seconds to load google chrome, and nothing was running. I then checked task manager and I had cpu spikes, while doing nothing. I then thought it was due to me installing new drivers and running that defrag. I can not pin point the problem of my high CPU usage. Please any help is appreciated.

Heres my resource monitior, I tried to run error-checking and it said it was in use.

Hardware Specs:
Window Vista (32bit)
Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2200 (2.20 GHz)
AMD Radeon HD 6570

 

[Pinhedd]

That is a very old low end microprocessor, you shouldn't expect too much out of it regardless of how clean and optimized your PC is.

In any case, upgrading graphics drivers can occasionally be problematic, especially if the revision gap is quite large. For example, upgrading from a very old revision such as 13.1 to a very new revision such as 14.4 can cause problems. Such problems were more common in the past than they are now, but the odd one still creeps up every once in a while.

What you should do is uninstall the AMD graphics drivers using the Catalyst Uninstall Utility and then purge all remaining files and registry entries using Display Driver Uninstaller. Then, reboot and install the latest 14.4 revision or 14.7 beta revision.

 

[chanwolf]

That is a very old low end microprocessor, you shouldn't expect too much out of it regardless of how clean and optimized your PC is.

In any case, upgrading graphics drivers can occasionally be problematic, especially if the revision gap is quite large. For example, upgrading from a very old revision such as 13.1 to a very new revision such as 14.4 can cause problems. Such problems were more common in the past than they are now, but the odd one still creeps up every once in a while.

What you should do is uninstall the AMD graphics drivers using the Catalyst Uninstall Utility and then purge all remaining files and registry entries using Display Driver Uninstaller. Then, reboot and install the latest 14.4 revision or 14.7 beta revision.

Hi Pinhedd, I am not very computer suave and I might need extra help. By uninstalling the AMD graphics , do I go to device manager and uninstall ? Will I still be able to boot up after I uninstall drivers?

EDIT : Sorry I did not see that you asked to use AMD Catalyst Control, I tried checking to look for the uninstaller. But nothing was found, may you lead me to the uninstaller in the Catalyst Control Center?
I also have another question why is my searchindexer.exe searching such weird places such as in my mincraft folder.

 

[Pinhedd]

Hi Pinhedd, I am not very computer suave and I might need extra help. By uninstalling the AMD graphics , do I go to device manager and uninstall ? Will I still be able to boot up after I uninstall drivers?

Hi,

You should perform the uninstall through the Programs and Features menu in the Control Panel. AMD uses its own custom install manager to install/uninstall drivers. The program name is "AMD Catalyst Install Manager". Select it, press "change" and proceed through the menu to select "Express uninstall all AMD software".

Before you do this though I would advise that you download the latest Catalyst drivers to your PC. After the drivers are removed, you will be prompted to reboot. After you have rebooted Windows will automatically install its native VGA drivers which support a limited set of display resolutions, this can make browsing the web to download the drivers difficult so it's best to download them before removing them.

 

[chanwolf]

Hi Pinhedd, I am not very computer suave and I might need extra help. By uninstalling the AMD graphics , do I go to device manager and uninstall ? Will I still be able to boot up after I uninstall drivers?

Hi,

You should perform the uninstall through the Programs and Features menu in the Control Panel. AMD uses its own custom install manager to install/uninstall drivers. The program name is "AMD Catalyst Install Manager". Select it, press "change" and proceed through the menu to select "Express uninstall all AMD software".

Before you do this though I would advise that you download the latest Catalyst drivers to your PC. After the drivers are removed, you will be prompted to reboot. After you have rebooted Windows will automatically install its native VGA drivers which support a limited set of display resolutions, this can make browsing the web to download the drivers difficult so it's best to download them before removing them.

Okay I shall try that , one last thing why is my hard drive acting weird? Does it have anything to do with the defrag I did ? There is hardware faults, should I worry about that.
Here is a picture:

 

[Pinhedd]

Hi Pinhedd, I am not very computer suave and I might need extra help. By uninstalling the AMD graphics , do I go to device manager and uninstall ? Will I still be able to boot up after I uninstall drivers?

Hi,

You should perform the uninstall through the Programs and Features menu in the Control Panel. AMD uses its own custom install manager to install/uninstall drivers. The program name is "AMD Catalyst Install Manager". Select it, press "change" and proceed through the menu to select "Express uninstall all AMD software".

Before you do this though I would advise that you download the latest Catalyst drivers to your PC. After the drivers are removed, you will be prompted to reboot. After you have rebooted Windows will automatically install its native VGA drivers which support a limited set of display resolutions, this can make browsing the web to download the drivers difficult so it's best to download them before removing them.

Okay I shall try that , one last thing why is my hard drive acting weird? Does it have anything to do with the defrag I did ? There is hardware faults, should I worry about that.
Here is a picture:

Your machine is quite old, so your hard disk drive will also be quite old. HDD performance does deteriorate a bit over time, but not a whole lot.

Hard faults (more commonly known as page faults, but Microsoft has to be special for some reason) are normal, they can indicate poorly written code but are not considered a problem. A page fault occurs when a process tries to access a virtual memory address that the operating system has swapped out from the physical address space to the hard disk; this occurs primarily with infrequently used memory such as startup and shutdown code. 650 hard faults per minute is quite a bit if sustained, but if it's only transient and settles down eventually I wouldn't worry about it; it may be a search indexer or something along those lines which constantly looks at files through a memory mapped interface. Just keep an eye on it.

 

[chanwolf]

Okay I finished re-installing my drive. Some things I would like to point out is that , after I did complete uninstall of my drivers I rebooted. I thought maybe the CPU spikes were gone because I uninstalled the drivers, but it was still spiking. Another thing I found weird was that when I got back into my desktop was that everything was still the same, resolution, and quality. It was like nothing changed at all.

 

[Pinhedd]

Okay I finished re-installing my drive. Some things I would like to point out is that , after I did complete uninstall of my drivers I rebooted. I thought maybe the CPU spikes were gone because I uninstalled the drivers, but it was still spiking. Another thing I found weird was that when I got back into my desktop was that everything was still the same, resolution, and quality. It was like nothing changed at all.

The Windows native VGA drivers are substantially better on Windows Vista and beyond than they were with Windows XP. It may be that the configuration that you had configured with the official AMD drivers is also well supported by the Windows native drivers. Many other components related to 3D rendering will not be supported in the native drivers though, so don't try and run games with them.

Make sure that you purge the drivers completely using Display Driver Uninstaller after uninstalling the AMD Catalyst drivers.

 

[chanwolf]

Okay I finished re-installing my drive. Some things I would like to point out is that , after I did complete uninstall of my drivers I rebooted. I thought maybe the CPU spikes were gone because I uninstalled the drivers, but it was still spiking. Another thing I found weird was that when I got back into my desktop was that everything was still the same, resolution, and quality. It was like nothing changed at all.

The Windows native VGA drivers are substantially better on Windows Vista and beyond than they were with Windows XP. It may be that the configuration that you had configured with the official AMD drivers is also well supported by the Windows native drivers. Many other components related to 3D rendering will not be supported in the native drivers though, so don't try and run games with them.

Make sure that you purge the drivers completely using Display Driver Uninstaller after uninstalling the AMD Catalyst drivers.

I am sorry, I do not understand what purge the drivers completely. But I did select the uninstall all the AMD drivers. I think I was to hasty, I uninstall'd the drivers and re installed. Sorry about that.
Should I redo the process? Also it would be great if you could teach me now to purge the drivers completely, this seems like an important step. Thanks for your time.

 

[chanwolf]

It seems like a hard drive fault , it is running such random searches on files that I defraged yesterday.

 

[Pinhedd]

Okay I finished re-installing my drive. Some things I would like to point out is that , after I did complete uninstall of my drivers I rebooted. I thought maybe the CPU spikes were gone because I uninstalled the drivers, but it was still spiking. Another thing I found weird was that when I got back into my desktop was that everything was still the same, resolution, and quality. It was like nothing changed at all.

The Windows native VGA drivers are substantially better on Windows Vista and beyond than they were with Windows XP. It may be that the configuration that you had configured with the official AMD drivers is also well supported by the Windows native drivers. Many other components related to 3D rendering will not be supported in the native drivers though, so don't try and run games with them.

Make sure that you purge the drivers completely using Display Driver Uninstaller after uninstalling the AMD Catalyst drivers.

I am sorry, I do not understand what purge the drivers completely. But I did select the uninstall all the AMD drivers. I think I was to hasty, I uninstall'd the drivers and re installed. Sorry about that.
Should I redo the process? Also it would be great if you could teach me now to purge the drivers completely, this seems like an important step. Thanks for your time.

Yes, you should redo it. Uninstall the drivers as you did. Reboot. Purge the drivers completely with Display Driver Uninstaller (it's a seperate tool which you will have to download). Reboot again. Install the new drivers.

It seems like a hard drive fault , it is running such random searches on files that I defraged yesterday.

I'm not certain to what degree the Windows search bypasses the file system and acts directly on the hard disk volume itself. If it works at the file system layer, the defragmentation will have no impact but if it works at the block layer it will have to rescan the hard disk. This may take a while and will generate a massive number of hard faults in the process. To be clear, hard faults are completely normal and should not be confused with hardware failure.

 

[chanwolf]

Okay I will try to redo it. I'll let you know when I am done.

 

[chanwolf]

Okay I finished re-installing my drive. Some things I would like to point out is that , after I did complete uninstall of my drivers I rebooted. I thought maybe the CPU spikes were gone because I uninstalled the drivers, but it was still spiking. Another thing I found weird was that when I got back into my desktop was that everything was still the same, resolution, and quality. It was like nothing changed at all.

The Windows native VGA drivers are substantially better on Windows Vista and beyond than they were with Windows XP. It may be that the configuration that you had configured with the official AMD drivers is also well supported by the Windows native drivers. Many other components related to 3D rendering will not be supported in the native drivers though, so don't try and run games with them.

Make sure that you purge the drivers completely using Display Driver Uninstaller after uninstalling the AMD Catalyst drivers.

I am sorry, I do not understand what purge the drivers completely. But I did select the uninstall all the AMD drivers. I think I was to hasty, I uninstall'd the drivers and re installed. Sorry about that.
Should I redo the process? Also it would be great if you could teach me now to purge the drivers completely, this seems like an important step. Thanks for your time.

Yes, you should redo it. Uninstall the drivers as you did. Reboot. Purge the drivers completely with Display Driver Uninstaller (it's a seperate tool which you will have to download). Reboot again. Install the new drivers.

It seems like a hard drive fault , it is running such random searches on files that I defraged yesterday.

I'm not certain to what degree the Windows search bypasses the file system and acts directly on the hard disk volume itself. If it works at the file system layer, the defragmentation will have no impact but if it works at the block layer it will have to rescan the hard disk. This may take a while and will generate a massive number of hard faults in the process. To be clear, hard faults are completely normal and should not be confused with hardware failure.

I finished re installing the drives / purging it before installing. My CPU usage was still spiking when I finished doing so. But I've read from another discussion that I had to go to index options, after that I hit advance and clicked rebuild. Doing this gave me stable 4-10% cpu usage. Does that mean it had something to do with indexing ? My HD was making weird noises also.

 

[Pinhedd]

Okay I finished re-installing my drive. Some things I would like to point out is that , after I did complete uninstall of my drivers I rebooted. I thought maybe the CPU spikes were gone because I uninstalled the drivers, but it was still spiking. Another thing I found weird was that when I got back into my desktop was that everything was still the same, resolution, and quality. It was like nothing changed at all.

The Windows native VGA drivers are substantially better on Windows Vista and beyond than they were with Windows XP. It may be that the configuration that you had configured with the official AMD drivers is also well supported by the Windows native drivers. Many other components related to 3D rendering will not be supported in the native drivers though, so don't try and run games with them.

Make sure that you purge the drivers completely using Display Driver Uninstaller after uninstalling the AMD Catalyst drivers.

I am sorry, I do not understand what purge the drivers completely. But I did select the uninstall all the AMD drivers. I think I was to hasty, I uninstall'd the drivers and re installed. Sorry about that.
Should I redo the process? Also it would be great if you could teach me now to purge the drivers completely, this seems like an important step. Thanks for your time.

Yes, you should redo it. Uninstall the drivers as you did. Reboot. Purge the drivers completely with Display Driver Uninstaller (it's a seperate tool which you will have to download). Reboot again. Install the new drivers.

It seems like a hard drive fault , it is running such random searches on files that I defraged yesterday.

I'm not certain to what degree the Windows search bypasses the file system and acts directly on the hard disk volume itself. If it works at the file system layer, the defragmentation will have no impact but if it works at the block layer it will have to rescan the hard disk. This may take a while and will generate a massive number of hard faults in the process. To be clear, hard faults are completely normal and should not be confused with hardware failure.

I finished re installing the drives / purging it before installing. My CPU usage was still spiking when I finished doing so. But I've read from another discussion that I had to go to index options, after that I hit advance and clicked rebuild. Doing this gave me stable 4-10% cpu usage. Does that mean it had something to do with indexing ? My HD was making weird noises also.

I don't know enough about how Windows handles various levels of indexing, so I can't say for sure. If it took a while to rebuild the index you may have simply expedited the process that it was performing in the background before; that's just my guess though.

As for the HDD making strange noises, that can sometimes indicate poor drive health. There are some S.M.A.R.T tools which can read performance data from the disk drive to determine if failure is likely in the near future. Windows will also track events in the Event Log that may be related to poor drive health.