High CPU Usage

[ChrisU84]

Hi all. I have a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad T60 (2.166 Core 2 Duo Processor; 1 GB ram; Windows XP Pro) and I noticed that the task manager shows that my CPU usage is consistently very high. For example, just when surfing the web and having minimal programs open, it is consistently between 40-65%. Right now, for example, my CPU usage is at 61%, and I have only internet explorer and iTunes open. A look at the Processes list on the task manager shows that the System Idle Process is taking up about 40%. Does anyone have any idea why my CPU usage is so high? If I close all programs, it will dip down to 1-2% and have a System Idle Process of about 99.

Thanks very much for the help.

 

[mancunian]

Itunes isnt the most CPU friendly app. Just google 'Itunes CPU usage' and you'll see what I mean.

As for System Idle Process being 99%, that is how it should be. Keyword 'idle'. That is perfectly normal.

 

[ChrisU84]

Ok, with iTunes closed and a single IE Explorer window open, I'm still around 50-65% usage. I googled some of the processes and it looks like the ones hogging resources all belong to Norton Antivirus (ccEvtMgr.exe; Rtvscan.exe; SPBBCSVC.exe). I know that antivirus software takes up a good amount of resources, but 50-65% consistently seems ridiculous and is much higher than the resources my antivirus software used on my old (and considerably slower) computer. What should I do? Thanks!

 

[mancunian]

Ah, Norton. The very devil of antivirus software.

I know this is going to sound like a cheap response, but Norton is one of the biggest CPU hogs ever.

The software isn't even that good. The unfortunate thing about that god awful product is that when you uninstall it, it's never totally gone. It always leaves remnants.

I would try to disable its processes (in Norton's options) from running constantly in the background.

I'm not joking you when I say that if I acquired a PC with Norton Antivirus preinstalled, I would format the drive and reinstall the OS.

Sounds drastic, but that's how bad Norton is. I'm sure a lot of folk here would agree. If you do decide to ditch Norton, you might want to look at other antivirus software such as Avast or AVG. (which are both free as far as I know)

 

[ChrisU84]

Hi Mancunian. Thanks very much for your responses, I really appreciate it.

I have never been a huge fan of Norton AntiVirus, but unfortunately I have no choice but to use it at the moment as my University requires it. I just uninstalled it for a moment to test things out, and sure enough, with it uninstalled, my CPU usage is at a low 3-5%. So this is not some kind of error with my system? Its processes, if left running, really take up 50-65%? I was wondering if maybe there had been some kind of installation error, as I had to uninstall the Symantec Client software that came with the computer and upgrade it with my university version. I am figuring that when I reinstall it, it'll shoot right back up to the same high number, which is weird because it never took up that many resources on my old Thinkpad. If you don't think it's some kind of software problem, but it genuinely just takes up that many resources, I will go ahead and try to disable some of those processes.

Thanks again.

 

[mancunian]

No probs Chris.

Yes, I would just try and disable the Norton stuff running in the background which you know you don't need. Fairly sure you can reduce that CPU load by doing this.

Your system itself is fine. And indeed, Norton does take up that amount of CPU usage.

I think Symantec decided to increase the 'bloat factor' as the years went by.

Edit: You might also want to disable that daft function whereby Norton 'protects' your recycle bin. That only ends up causing problems further down the line.

 

[MadAmos]

I disagree that Norton take up that much of you CPU usage I have 3 systems running NAV 2007 and none show more than 2-3% and then only intermitantly. I don't know why yours is different but there is more to it than the Norton s**ks answer that always comes up. I would start by checking all the setting in Norton to see that it is not miss- configured Also is this happening even with no other apps browsers e-mail etc. running?

Originally posted by: mancunian
No probs Chris.

Yes, I would just try and disable the Norton stuff running in the background which you know you don't need. Fairly sure you can reduce that CPU load by doing this.

Your system itself is fine. And indeed, Norton does take up that amount of CPU usage.

I think Symantec decided to increase the 'bloat factor' as the years went by.

Edit: You might also want to disable that daft function whereby Norton 'protects' your recycle bin. That only ends up causing problems further down the line.

 

[ChrisU84]

Thanks for the reply. Just sitting here typing on this forum with no other programs open, the CPU usage is at about 53%. With regard to the settings, I have whatever is the default going: Tamper Protection & System AutoProtect are on, while Internet E-mail Auto-Protect and Microsoft Exchange are disabled. I just can't figure out why these processes are taking up so many resources.

Edit: I just experimented by turning off Tamper Protection, and that seems to have made a pretty significant difference. Strangely though, having Tamper Protection enabled on my previous system never seemed to be a problem (it was Corporate Version 10.1 compared to 10.1.4 which I'm using now). Should I maybe reformat my computer? Perhaps uninstalling the Symantec Client Security System that came with the computer, then installing/uninstalling 10.1.5 and finally installing 10.1.4 caused some sort of problem?

 

[sieistganzfett]

i'm in shock that the SAV 10 series is doing this on a xp computer. i only seen this on windows 2000, and it was every single win2k computer this happened on...


for your solution, try out these
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/en...edfa3c35380256cdb003f2ecc?OpenDocument******=bar_sch_nam

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/en...curity.nsf/docid/2005042710304248?Open******=w

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/en...564bbe?OpenDocument&seg=hm&lg=en&ct=us

which process of the SAV is the hog? my experience was the rvtscan and the doscan.

if this were mcafee or the norton brand of home user junk. i would say its inferior to the enterprise versions and always run slower than ever before (since the 2004 versions of norton or every single version of mcafee ever :laugh... as for AVG back in late 2006, i saw first hand that even the 'pay' version doesn't find enough viruses, an email virus that AVG didn't find was found by both mcafee and norton that same day when i tried infecting computers with it after copying it off a client pc with AVG that was up to date.. mcafee deleted it on me, norton just complained about it. :roll:

 

[ChrisU84]

Thanks very much for your response. I checked out some of those links but they didn't seem to make a difference. However, I did find something on google that may help to explain it. Apparently someone identified some sort of conflict between a task scheduling software installed on the Thinkpads and the Tamper Protection software, which somehow forces the Symantec to write huge logs to your computer. I disabled the Tamper Protection and sure enough the resources being used diminished significantly, so I'm inclined to think that maybe that was the problem. FYI the resource hogs were ccEvtMgr.exe, Rtvscan.exe, and SPBBCSVC.exe. Hoping that is the explanation rather than an issue with my computer.

 

[mancunian]

Originally posted by: MadAmos
I disagree that Norton take up that much of you CPU usage I have 3 systems running NAV 2007 and none show more than 2-3% and then only intermitantly. I don't know why yours is different but there is more to it than the Norton s**ks answer that always comes up. I would start by checking all the setting in Norton to see that it is not miss- configured Also is this happening even with no other apps browsers e-mail etc. running?

Well you can disagree if you like, but as you'll see from the answers Chris gave above that changing the tamper protection setting made a difference. On some PCs it does, on some it doesn't. On yours it clearly doesn't. On W2K boxes it does.

There may well be more to it than the 'Norton s*cks' answer.

But as far as I'm concerned, Norton is overbloated rubbish that I would not let anywhere near a PC. Just my opinion through a lot of years of working with PCs.

There are solutions out there that are just as effective, yet do not eat up CPU cycles if you leave some of their continuous monitoring features switched on.

And if you read what I wrote, my answer was not to get rid of Norton, but to merely reconfigure it. Its default settings can cause *some* PCs to crawl.

Because as you are no doubt aware, there are thousands if not millions of hardware configurations used by the people of the world, you simply cannot say "it works on my system so it should work on yours".

If only it were so simple.

 

[ChrisU84]

Thanks everyone for their help. By having disabled Tamper Protection, my system resources are now hovering between 2-5% pretty regularly. I need to keep either that or my Thinkpad Away Manager (runs maintenance tasks in the background) de-activated and the computer will be happy.

Two quick questions if any of you don't mind: Is it OK to leave the Tamper Protection disabled all the time or does it play an important role? Also, in the course of experimeting today I ended up uninstalling Symantec Client Security Software, installing and uninstalling AntiVirus 10.1.5 two times and then installing 10.1.4 (each time I uninstalled I used the Add/Remove programs method). I've heard rumors that Symantec doesn't ever completley "uninstall" - would having installed/uninstalled numerous times today left traces that might clog up the computer or should it be ok?

Thanks again all. I genuinely appreciate it.