High CPU when first starting the laptop

Others · 25 Feb 2018

Hello,

I have had my lap top (make, model and specs in my system details) for about two weeks, and have noticed that it often uses a lot of CPU even when I'm not running anything. For example, I can just start up the lap top, open Task Manager, and see that there is a lot of CPU activity. As a result, the machine runs quite slowly.

I tried running msconfig and disabling all non-MS services, but it didn't really help (maybe a weeny bit, but not enough to say the problem went away).

Looking at the Details tab of Task Manager shows that svchost.exe uses a lot of CPU.

I just restarted again, and whilst the CPU wasn't as high as I've seen, it was still quite high considering I wasn't running anything at all. I used the Windows Assessment Toolkit to grab a trace which I've attached.

Anyone able to give any ideas what's going on?
Thanks

mrgeek · 25 Feb 2018

Click the arrow next to svchost.exe and no doubt you'll see that Windows Update which starts up each time you start the device is the culprit. Since I shut down every night and this was slowing down the computer for 15-20 min each time, I disable WU with this utility and just enable when a WU is issued. This will temp hide your Installed Update history but Windows Defender will still update itself at startup, as usual. Test and see if it helps - http://www.novirusthanks.org/products/win-update-stop/

Others · 25 Feb 2018

Thanks very much for your reply.
Did you mean an arrow next to svchost in the pro cesses tab? In the details tab I can't see any arrows.
I have loads of 'Service Hosts:...' I can't figure out if one of them is the Windows update.

zinou · 25 Feb 2018

Hi,

I've looked at your trace file and what I can see is that the CPU activity caused by svchost you've seen in the task manager is due to Prefetcher activity.

The prefetcher is a windows mechanism that improve I/O operation on disk devices. It's triggered when the system is idle to rearrange files, and do some defragmentation to speed up the boot process & applications' launche. This is why there is a High disk I/O shown on the Disk graph.

This can be a normal behavior, but if you states that you notice that every day, it means that the Prefetcher is may be broken and need to be "repaired".

I'll not recommend to disable the superfetch, that can lead to poor performance on your 5400 rpm disk. Instead I'd recommend you run this command to helps the prefetcher working properly again;

xbootmgr -trace boot -prepSystem -verboseReadyBoot

this reboots Windows several times (6 times), does a defrag and trains the prefetcher again. Be patient it can take some time.

High CPU when first starting the laptop-capture.png

High CPU when first starting the laptop-capture1.png

Others · 26 Feb 2018

Thanks for that suggestion zinou,
I ran xbootmgr -trace boot -prepSystem -verboseReadyBoot and somewhere part way (rebooting for the 3rd time) through it got stuck at preparing system (about an hour). So I rebooted the lap top, and once it finally restarted, it carried on with the process and again is stuck on 'Preparing system...'
Awaiting any kind response!

Others · 26 Feb 2018

I checked the Task manager and found that an antivirus program was trying to update, so I disabled that and it finished the process.
Now, even though it has finished I can still see it in Task Manager, is there anything I still need to do?
Upon checking the CPU, it does seem to have gone back to normal.
I will update if anything else to report.
Thanks!

zinou · 26 Feb 2018

Yes this can take several hours depending on the size of data on your disk. You have to be patient ...

zinou · 26 Feb 2018

You can use autologon tool from sysinternals, it will avoid you to enter manually your credentials at each reboot ...

Others · 26 Feb 2018

It has finished the whole process. Rebooted 6 times.
Is that it??
What where those screenshots you showed above?

zinou · 26 Feb 2018

Ok, take another boot trace. save the trace file on an external drive (Usb key), so that you will not add overhead to the disk I/O.
We'll see if there is any improvement...