CPU reaches 100% with nothing running in clean win7 install

Discussion in 'Windows - General discussion' started by jam320, Dec 9, 2012.

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  1. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    For several months I have tried to determine the sluggishness of my cpu after a clean win7 64 install. Here is some background:

    SPECS:
    Core 2 Quad Q6700 @ 2.66GHZ
    Intel DG35EC
    Corsair 4X2GB DDR2
    Hitachi 1TB | WD Ext 1TB
    Geforce 9600 GSO 768MB
    NZXT HALE82 650W
    Win7 Home Prem 64 | Vista Business 32

    This win7 home prem sp1 64 OEM was previously working fine for over 6 months then things went weird. By weird I mean that a normal boot would take several minutes to reach the desktop. Booting in safe mode did not change the length of time either. Another thing that occurred was my desktop background went black. I read somewhere that suggested I create a new desktop profile and this would fix things. I did not. I cannot be certain of the cause of this but I recall two events that may be related.

    (1) I had a laptop die around this time so I was going to transfer its hdd contents to the desktop. I connected it via SATA to my MOBO. However upon bootup win7 did not recognize it. Could this have corrupted something? I ran SuperMalwareBytes but it turned up nothing.
    (2) I windows update occurred around this time. With my MOBO and CPU being outdated is it possible that they are not compatible up to a certain update? I currently am running Vista 32 on the other partition with no problems.

    I decided to reinstall win7 on the partition however this did not solve the problem either. The new install was still sluggish and at time almost unresponsive e.g. the cpu would be at 65% and higher just running Firefox while my 8GB of ram read <40%.

    I then decided to reformat the partition first and then install it. Again this did very little. I currently have that one installed and have installed of the win updates since. I ran memtest86 and passed. I installed process explorer but could not identify a specific area that had an abnormal consumption rate.

    Any advice would be great. Thanks!
     
    jam320, Dec 9, 2012
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  2. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    task manager showing 8gigs of ram in win7? do you have or can borrow a spare hd to fresh install win7 to see if still a problem. do a scandisk on the hd to check for errors as maybe bad sectors on win7 side but not on vista which is why i asked about another hard drive.
     
    ddp, Dec 9, 2012
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  3. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    I have an external hdd I can try this on. I will first run scandisk. I will report back with the outcome. Thanks.
     
    jam320, Dec 9, 2012
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  4. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    I used scandisk on that partition from the vista side and no errors were reported. Should I still consider using another hdd?
     
    jam320, Dec 9, 2012
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  5. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    yes with the hitachi drive disconnected.
     
    ddp, Dec 9, 2012
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  6. snotboy1

    snotboy1 Member

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    --------------------------------------------------------------------
    #1 YOU NEED A HIGHER WATTAGE POWER SUPPLY at least least 800 watts
    #2 DONT DUAL BOOT (MEANING THAT YOU HAVE 2 OPERATING SYSTEMS ON THE SAME HARD DISK,
    get rid of vista, reformat the hdd with a single win 7 partition
    #3 buy a new graphics card
    #4 after you re-install win7 make sure you get the system drivers from intel
    #5 if you are going to transfer the files from the external hdd ( laptop),dump them in
    a directory in the root or the my documents folder
    #6 the desktop is a special folder in windows and sometimes behaves weird for storeing
    large amounts of data.
    #7 did you enable all SATA ports in the bios?
    #8 did you run some kind of hdd test on both drives?
    #9 are you sure that the boot drive is on port zero of the system board both by physical cable connection and that the bios is set to boot to it?
    #10 BUY ANOTHER POWER SUPPLY OF HIGHER WATTAGE
     
    snotboy1, Dec 12, 2012
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  7. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    Thanks for the advice. I'm not sure 800 watts is needed. My 650w is brand new (1 week old), I previously had a 400w for 4 years so that's not an issue.

    Also why do you suggest a new gpu? I know its old but its worked fine so far. Currently the issues are resulting without it plugged in anyways (no drivers installed either).

    I ran chdsk on both partitions as well as hdtuner; both passed.

    I will check on the your other suggestions though.
     
    jam320, Dec 12, 2012
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  8. Ripper

    Ripper Active member

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    You don't need a PSU with a higher wattage at all, not for that spec. If it is new, then we can hopefully rule out that it is faulty. GPU is unrelated to this issue IMO so you don't need a new one.

    Why do you dual boot with Vista? A clean format of your drive and a fresh install of Windows 7 would be advisable despite no chdsk errors. Do you realise that your 32bit Vista OS will not be recognising all of your 8GB RAM, don't you?

    What temperature does it sit at under supposedly 100% load? Does the machine overheat and shut off?
     
    Ripper, Dec 12, 2012
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  9. aldan

    aldan Active member

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    where did you get some of that drivel?try not to talk with a paper arsehole,this guy needs advice not bull..t.
     
    aldan, Dec 12, 2012
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  10. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    UPDATE: I used an unused Hitachi internal 500gb to SATA. Win7 installed and updates are currently ongoing. Currently trying to install Symantec Endpoint Protection RU1 but it keeps failing. I decided to install 11.05 instead but that failed as well. Additionally, BSOD restarted my pc once (couldn't get the error code in time). Currently checking Intel drivers.
     
    jam320, Dec 12, 2012
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  11. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    at what point did you get that bsod, before or after symantec?
     
    ddp, Dec 12, 2012
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  12. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    Thanks for the reply. I know 32bit Vista is not ideal but it was my backup for Win7.
    As far as I know the temperature was only an issue when running a game at full specs and letting it idle for several hours (it did shutdown at least 2 times). I never checked the temperature though.
     
    jam320, Dec 12, 2012
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  13. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    After the failed install of Symantec.
     
    jam320, Dec 12, 2012
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  14. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    then not a driver issue.
     
    ddp, Dec 12, 2012
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  15. snotboy1

    snotboy1 Member

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    i still think that a higher wattage power supply will eliminate a lot of weird problems.
    u said you were running the game at full blast for several hours that makes the gpu suck up current. i DO take offense about that comment about my post as drivel, i have been a tech all my life and so i will not waste my time on this subject again.
     
    snotboy1, Dec 12, 2012
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  16. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    ddp, Dec 12, 2012
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  17. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    UPDATE: Ran Prime95 overnight for the CPU with no errors. Currently it is sluggish still and update kb982670 failed (only one to fail so far). Will try it again.
     
    jam320, Dec 13, 2012
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  18. Dela

    Dela Administrator Staff Member

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    Just to add a little bit of advice here, don't rely on Task Manager when you are looking for CPU usage or trying to find a memory leak or whatever. At least try Process Explorer as that can give you a much better picture of your system running.

    http://www.afterdawn.com/software/system_tools/system_information/process_explorer.cfm

    I had a similar problem with a laptop a bit over a year ago, I noticed sluggish performance and the CPU usage seemed to go off the chart from time to time. In Process Explorer, to my amazement, it was Hardware Interrupts and DPCs that was showing often very high CPU usage, which I had never seen before, and it did have a noticeable effect on my system.

    Shotgun approach of driver updates and a BIOS update from manufacturer seemed to fix it for me. I couldn't tell you exactly what the problem had been, just that it's gone.
     
    Dela, Dec 13, 2012
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  19. Dela

    Dela Administrator Staff Member

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    Also, since you are running a 64-bit version of Windows, your odds of having some kind of rootkit/bootkit problem are dramatically lower than usual, but there's a few ways it can happen so running a quick check with tdsskiller might be a good idea anywauy..

    http://support.kaspersky.com/5350

    Other than that, if your problem coincided with the installation (or failed installation as the case may be...) of a security product, then you should go to the vendor's website and find a removal tool for that specific product, which will check your system for every trace of it and remove it for you. Just another thought :)
     
    Dela, Dec 13, 2012
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  20. jam320

    jam320 Member

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    Thanks. I ran a rootkit scan several weeks ago but it wasn't Kaspersky so it wouldn't hurt to try this one. I'm not confident that it will not crash during the scan though. Since this is currently occurring with each attempt to add win updates.
     
    jam320, Dec 13, 2012
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