100% CPU usage with Windows Vista

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Unless I'm completely off my rocker the screenshots are from XP, not Vista.

Are you trying to use Vista drivers on an XP installation?

Ah, unless you've got it in classic of course...

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

You may be right but to me it looks like Vista in classic.

 

Sorry to deviate from the OP but how can you tell GBL, the difference in OS from looking at the ss's?
From looking at them i can't say whether it's xp or vista in classic or am i missing something? (sometimes i miss the obvious lol)

Back to the OP. Sounds very much like the chipset drivers need installed as has been suggested. It's a good starting point and won't cost you anything except a wee bit time looking for and installing them.

Let us know how it goes though rwc1969

 

I have the GUI set for best performance that's why it looks like Windows 2000/ XP. All the drivers, including Intel G33/ G31 chipset, are there and up to date. latest versions all around! I did some research last night and the ones that are missing in my above post are supposed to be missing. This machine I'm typing on doesn't have them and it works fine, so do all others I believe. There are no drivers for those devices! I have updated all drivers as of now.

msinfo32 shows everything is A-ok. System drivers, etc. etc. No IRQ conflicts listed, etc. etc.

I still haven't sorted it out, but figured I'd post this link for anyone else who may have a similar problem. http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=837 There is a lot of good info relating to High DPCs and hardware interrupts consuming up to 100% of CPU.

This issue relates to drivers or hardware. I disabled my integrated LAN, FDC and sound in BIOS. I fully patched Vista SP2, Drwatson showed no faults detected.

There were 2 fault buckets shown in msinfo32 under windows error reporting, but again I have no idea what they relate to. I googled every part of the fault bucket wording and got nothing back.

Has anyone looked at the event viewer reports I posted above as requested? Does anything in there look out of place? I googled several of the event codes and such and didn't come up with anything. My next step was to disable my integrated video, but I'd have no video then. The only other video card I have is AGP and the system only has PCI slots.

Frustrating! Thanks for the replies and if anyone can offer more tips I'd sure appreciate it.

 

From the warning symbols in the event viewer, they are still in vista style whilst everything else looks like XP

 

Still haven't figured it out.

I figured I'd start from scratch and reinstall from the dell vista 32bit setup dvd disk. That failed because the system wouldn't shut down after the initial required restart. Got a BSOD instead! Drive_power_state_failure. Stop 0x0000009f (0x00000003, 0x80b58c78, 0x80c4d790, 0x819e6008 ) I couldn't find anything Vista specific for this stop code. So, I reformatted and reinstalled again using the other Dell supplied Vista dvd disk, 32 bit sp1. For some reason Dell supplied 2 disks. One labeled Vista 32bit and the other labeled Vista 32bit sp1. I got the exact same results with a slightly different 0x9f stop code. Then,I tried repairing vista using the supplied sp1 disk, same result w' a slightly different 0x9f stop code again. Plus it now showed 2 instances of Vista on C drive. That is strange, because I reformatted C after every reinstall.

So then the system would not turn off and would never fully boot. After the initial scrolling windows bar at the bottom I would just get a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner of the screen.

I then tried using the Dell recovery partition again to restore to factory default, but couldn't access it from BIOS. Found an article on how to manually do this from the elevated command prompt in BIOS boot options. So, I managed to get the system restored once again to the factory default.

Upon the initial restart an error box popped up and stated Rundll32.exe "windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the system."

this jogged my memory and I now recall getting that same error box after the initial install way back in September 'ish and again a week or so back when I reinstalled from Dell partition to factory default.

At this point the system is back to the point when I first started this thread. I looked into the rundll32 error and couldn't find it in the appropriate folder in Windows. So, I ran sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt. The process took over 4 hours and it stated when finished. "found errors and couldn't repair some of the files" or something to the like. I researched that and it was stated that upon restart sfc /scannow usually fixes them. I checked after restart and the rundll32.exe file is now in the system32 folder along with many more that weren't there before I ran sfc /scannow.

This makes me think that the factory default install is missing many files. The system will now shutdown and restart on it's own, but it takes 10 minutes or longer to do so. It pretty much takes 10 minutes to do any one task. i.e. opening "computer", "C:", "Windows", "system32". I no longer get the bluescreen error code 0x9f, or the rundll32.exe pop up box when I restart.

On the previous factory default restore I updated my video, sound and lan drivers to the latest available with no results. In fact the latest Intel chipset driver kept giving me a "Vista" pop up asking me to run in legacy mode, so I went to Dell and got their latest driver update which was an earlier version, the pop up went away. As of now all drivers are factory default. Other than running sfc /scannow the system is as it was the day I bought it.

The thing I don't understand is why Ubuntu live won't run and even the restores from dvd disk took forever and failed. I'm starting to think the driver for, dvd-rom or psu to dvd is defective. What gets me even more is the fact that every error I've researched eventually leads to a Microsoft website that states the problem was in an earlier version of Windows, nothing specific to Vista, and that the problem was corrected with XP sp2 or the like.

 

It's not a laptop and yes I explained that in my above post. Reinstall and repair both failed using the DVD with a BSOD which I posted above as well in my last post. Thanks!.

 

Can you try a new PSU or another hard drive?

It seems like a driver and a hardware fault to me.

Having a defective PSU can bring up all sorts of crap which can be misleading and put you on a false trail.

Having a defective hard drive can cause windows not to install correctly. Do you hear any clicking from your hard drive? if so then it could be that it isn't reading and or writing correctly maybe try a CHKDSK on it.

 

As I mentioned a few days ago, this really does sound like a faulty HDD to me. Have you tried a different known good one yet?

 

Its not Windows Updates is it?

Ive had 100 cpu before in two different places ive worked each time due to WSUS / Windows Updates.

Probably not but thought I would throw it into the mix.

 

if I swap HDD will it work? My other HDD has xp on it and is a different machine alotgether. I did run HDtune on the HDD and it tested a-ok, but I will run chkdsk too. Also, I'm gonna switch the DVD drive afterwards just to eliminate it as a possibility. As far as windows updates, I thought that may be a problem as last time I restored they were set to aut. This time they're disabled. It's ran the same from sp1 all the way up to sp2. Sllllloooooooowwwwwww!!!!!.

Thanks for the tips. I'll try em all. I don't have another psu that will fit. i'm gonna see about getting a psu tester and check all the voltages.

 

you would have to have that pcs motherboard drivers on the hard drive and then install windows. I still think your psu is knackered though.

 

Someone just gave me a link to a MS hotfix for high cpu usage. Also, I ran chkdsk f/ r/ and it came back A-ok. I'm going to use xperf w' the help of someone else to try and track down the specific file causing the problem. If it is a file and report back. I hope it isn't the mobo as that would be too expensive to replace.

 

Have you actually ran the HDD diagnostic tool available from the HDD manufacturer? Also would be a good idea to swap the PSU out.

You mention that you have only had the system since last year, is it not still under warranty, if it is then get it repaired by them.

 

No, but the HDD is good. I've tested it many times now with various utilities. There are no errors or related problems with the HDD.

I ran a software to check the psu voltages, not too reliable, but I doubt that's it at this point. I'm not getting errors and BSODs due to this specific problem. After going to the sysinternals forum I was able to narrow down the problem, but not yet a solution. I ran many diagnostics, re-installed, etc. etc. I updated the BIOS too. It's a Dell/ foxconn g33mo2 motherboard. It seems they had some firmware issues. I updated to the latest Dell provides and it still doesn't work. Something to do with ACPI not functioning properly. ACPI.SYS overwhelms the cpu with hardware interrupts and DPCs making it impossible for anything else to access the cpu. ACPI.SYS is the driver for "Microsoft ACPI-compatible system" in Device Manager. I've tried disabling and uninstalling this device, but Vista just re-installs it automatically upon reboot.

Bottom line it appears I need a new mobo or somehow need to diasble ACPI.SYS, most likely ACPI period. I haven't found a way to do that in Vista and still have a functional pc. Thanks everyone for the help.

 

It's an issue w' the mobo/ firmware and here is my temporary solution. http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=19701&PID=104180#104180