Windows 7 cpu usage is super high when doing nothing

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pchelp

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Hello, I bought a restored hp elitebook 8460p with a core i5 processor and 16gb of ram, Recently the hard drive failed so i put a new one in, re installed windows 7 home premium 64 bit and downloaded all the drivers I could find and installed my programs, but now when my computer is just on the desktop with no open programs my cpu usage is at 25% and is using 4.5 gb of ram out of my 16gb!!! Just on the wifi typing this I'm using 5gb of ram. This causes the battery to go down very fast and recharge very slowly.
Does anybody have a solution to my problem???? thanks in advanced
 
Solution
To sort by a field in Process Monitor you just click on the field header so you click on the word CPU. To post pictures you just click "Upload a File" next to the "Post Reply" button. Svchost.exe is a generic service container. If you hover your mouse over the svchost.exe in question it will list which services are running in it.

To diagnose your power drain you can
  • Open an elevate command prompt (Windows Key type cmd, right click command prompt and select Run As Administrator)
  • Type powercfg /batteryreport /output "%userprofile%\desktop\batteryreport.html"
  • Type powercfg /sleepstudy /output "%userprofile%\desktop\sleepstudy.html"
  • Upload both of these files here too
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Download Process Explorer make sure everything is expanded and sort by CPU (highest on top) and take a screenshot. Then sort by Working Set (Highest on top) take a screen shot and post those screenshots here.

Guessing without any further details I would imagine your system is getting Windows updates. Windows updates will take about 1-2GB of RAM up and some CPU.
 
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How do you sort that from cpu on top and such, and if it helps anyone, the computer starts in a normal idle right after bootup, then later get high usage, and does anyone know how to solve the grey static screen that shows up sometimes when you boot the computer.
 
Last edited:
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First thing needed after a re-install is getting all updates and there are lots of them. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Check for Updates and keep that doing until all are installed. This may take half a day.

All the things you mention may well be caused by updates that are being started.
 
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thanks, i turned the automatic updates off but havent yet seen any improvement, I am checking for updates but that would be making my computer work. But getting back the the process explorer the top 2 things on each cpu and working set is "System Idle Process" and "svchost.exe", What are those????
 
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System Idle Process is what it says, the system is idle / empty / doing nothing and svchost can be anything, you need the process monitor to see more. But please install all updates first.
 
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To sort by a field in Process Monitor you just click on the field header so you click on the word CPU. To post pictures you just click "Upload a File" next to the "Post Reply" button. Svchost.exe is a generic service container. If you hover your mouse over the svchost.exe in question it will list which services are running in it.

To diagnose your power drain you can
  • Open an elevate command prompt (Windows Key type cmd, right click command prompt and select Run As Administrator)
  • Type powercfg /batteryreport /output "%userprofile%\desktop\batteryreport.html"
  • Type powercfg /sleepstudy /output "%userprofile%\desktop\sleepstudy.html"
  • Upload both of these files here too
 
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Solution
bochane said:
System Idle Process is what it says, the system is idle / empty / doing nothing and svchost can be anything, you need the process monitor to see more. But please install all updates first.
Click to expand...
Why is the checking updates taking so long, its been at least 4 hours and it is still checking for updates, it wont even tell me if it has found any yet.
 
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There could be a lot of them, or it's simply hung. You can check the size of C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution if it is growing in size then it is downloading updates. Windows Updates also uses BITS to download and it only uses idle bandwidth to download them so if you have a lot of other network activity then the Windows Updates will take longer. You can check to see the state of updates .

  • Open an elevated powershell prompt
  • Type Get-BitsTransfer -AllUsers
 
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If you want to restart the the Windows Update process you can do the following
  • Press Windows key + r
  • Type services.msc
  • Stop Windows Updates then stop Background Intelligent Transfer Service
  • Delete C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution
  • Restart Windows Update
 
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When I type that into the command prompt it says something like try again, and yes i am running it under administrator
 
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The command prompt needs to be elevated. You must right click on command prompt and select "Run As Administrator" this is different than merely being logged in with an administrator account.
 
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Now It says cant delete the file because it is open in another program
 
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Neemobeer said:
The command prompt needs to be elevated. You must right click on command prompt and select "Run As Administrator" this is different than merely being logged in with an administrator account.
Click to expand...
I did and i just tryed it again and it still said the same thing
 
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In the command prompt type net user <username> and verify you are a member of the administrators group
 
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