CPU usage at > 0%, but no processes using CPU?

[ensign_lee]

Hey y'all,

IN the task manager, under performance, I see that it keeps bouncing between 8 and 25%, and my CPU-Z isn't letting my it-2500k bring itself to 1.6 Ghz idle.

BUT, when I go to the processes tab in the task manager to go and look at what is using up my CPU, there are NO processes using the CPU?!?!?!

...uh...what could be causing this?

 

[ensign_lee]

update: hit the "show processes from all users" button, and figured out it's coming form IAStorDataMgrSvc.exe

...

wtf is this? Brief googel serach reveals taht it's some sort of intel driver, but I can't imagine this is intended...?

 

[ensign_lee]

It's an intel rapid storage RAID thingy. Uninstalled it, and now problem went away. Weird...Can't believe intel would intentionally put drivers on my computer that would take up 1 core all the time. I don't use RAID, so no big loss to me.

 

[Schmide]

You may just be masking another problem. Just because the driver was giving you the high results doesn't necessarily mean it was the root cause of the problem. One of the things I've noticed, windows indexing service does a really really bad job of handling broken links on the desktop. If you have a broken link on the desktop it will often cause high CPU usage. Look for that, restore the driver and then update all your drivers.

I would bet you are now getting poor disk performance.

 

[hamunaptra]

I know the issue has already been figured out. But I ran across the following once or twice in my 10+ years of fixing PC's.
The task manager showed no processes using the CPU. Yet CPU usage was above zero by quite a bit. It wasnt until I fired up procexp from sysinternals and noticed the CPU was being taken over by insane amount of interrupts from system hardware. Later determined the video card was defective because it was interrupt flooding the system, even with different drivers.
Anyways, its one good thing to check interrupts if no explainable process is found eating up the CPU.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I know the issue has already been figured out. But I ran across the following once or twice in my 10+ years of fixing PC's.
The task manager showed no processes using the CPU. Yet CPU usage was above zero by quite a bit. It wasnt until I fired up procexp from sysinternals and noticed the CPU was being taken over by insane amount of interrupts from system hardware. Later determined the video card was defective because it was interrupt flooding the system, even with different drivers.
Anyways, its one good thing to check interrupts if no explainable process is found eating up the CPU.

The VisionTek Radeon 2600Pro AGP card will do that. The visionTek drivers disable the HDMI audio driver, but until they are loaded, (esp during the process of installation), the audio hardware comes up in a state that floods the system with interrupts, slowing everything to an absolute crawl.