WIndows 10 issue... about to give up

[pjmssn]

I need to get my frustration out of my system and hopefully get possible solutions short of re-installing windows.
I have a fairly fresh install of windows 10 (~ 2 months), it was an upgrade from windows 7 pro. Everything was working smoothly until about 1 week ago. Here is the issue, so annoying that I am considering ditching windows.
My system is a HP z420, Xeon E5-1650 V2, 64 GB DDR3 ECC, GTX1050, 240 GB SSD SANDISK, 4 TB HDD.
This is my main computer and I usually never turn it off or let it sleep.
For the past week or so, windows has been behaving in a strange way, if I leave the computer unattended for some time, the CPU usage increases to high usage between 70% and 100%, system appears to have a fairly high CPU load ~15-20% and the rest of the load seems to be distributed among all the other processes ~1-3% each. The computer then becomes very slow and laggy. I does this on and off until I reboot. After rebooting, the computer behaves properly until I leave it idle for a while and the issue starts again. I now have to reboot several times a day.
I have read everything I could find on the internet about high CPU usage in windows 10, but could not find a solution.
I have checks for malware using Malwarebyte (clean)
I have checked for viruses using McAffee (clean)
I have checked all my drivers, everything looks fine.
Cleaned the registry, removed all the programs loaded at start up, switched from Chrome to Edge (just un case Chrome was the culprit), no change.
I honestly do not know what to do next. My other computers have never exhibited such issue (Lenovo P50, XPS 8300 (wife's computer), T5500).

Thank for letting me rant and let me know if you have any idea on how to fix the issue.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I need to get my frustration out of my system and hopefully get possible solutions short of re-installing windows.
I have a fairly fresh install of windows 10 (~ 2 months), it was an upgrade from windows 7 pro. Everything was working smoothly until about 1 week ago. Here is the issue, so annoying that I am considering ditching windows.
My system is a HP z420, Xeon E5-1650 V2, 64 GB DDR3 ECC, GTX1050, 240 GB SSD SANDISK, 4 TB HDD.
This is my main computer and I usually never turn it off or let it sleep.
For the past week or so, windows has been behaving in a strange way, if I leave the computer unattended for some time, the CPU usage increases to high usage between 70% and 100%, system appears to have a fairly high CPU load ~15-20% and the rest of the load seems to be distributed among all the other processes ~1-3% each. The computer then becomes very slow and laggy. I does this on and off until I reboot. After rebooting, the computer behaves properly until I leave it idle for a while and the issue starts again. I now have to reboot several times a day.
I have read everything I could find on the internet about high CPU usage in windows 10, but could not find a solution.
I have checks for malware using Malwarebyte (clean)
I have checked for viruses using McAffee (clean)
I have checked all my drivers, everything looks fine.
Cleaned the registry, removed all the programs loaded at start up, switched from Chrome to Edge (just un case Chrome was the culprit), no change.
I honestly do not know what to do next. My other computers have never exhibited such issue (Lenovo P50, XPS 8300 (wife's computer), T5500).

Thank for letting me rant and let me know if you have any idea on how to fix the issue.

Do you normally shut off your computer at night/when you aren't using it? There's a not-small amount of 'stuff' Windows has to do fairly regularly, and if it doesn't, it'll shoehorn it in when you're trying to work. This includes defrag (should be fast on a SSD), Win Defender scans (takes a while no matter what), indexing (can take a while depending on what's indexed and if it's actually completed yet), Windows Updates (takes a while pretty much no matter what). Another big culprit is if you have several AV/AM systems walking over each other. If McAfee/malwarebytes are installed now, I'd dump them immediately (along with any other 'speed up the thing/be more secure!' doodads), just let Defender do it's thing.

You can fire up resource monitor (task manager -> performance -> resource monitor) and take a look at a few tabs to see what's actually doing stuff. Check for high disk usage during these 'bad times' and see what's being hit. If some program is flipping through your disk, and Defender's on-access scanner is tracking all that, it'll tear up your CPU, as an example.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I've woken my PC from monitor sleep mode, and my 6C/12T Ryzen has EVERY CORE PINNED. Of course, it stops once I move the mouse. What could be running? I'm guessing Windows 10, but it's possible I might have malware, I suppose.

No, it wasn't because of DC, I had that stuff all shut down at the time.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I have not experienced this issue, but have a few questions.

Have you guys disabled the windows update peer-to-peer delivery stuff? And what does network traffic look like when it is happening?

I certainly do not recommend uninstalling malwarebytes, I have it on all my windows systems and no issues such as reported. McAfee/Intel security on the other hand can suck it. It is far too limited in utility for the footprint and intrusiveness imo.

 

[pjmssn]

Yes, I have disabled windows update peer-to-peer, I would not mind windows doing its maintenance work if it stopped when I start to use the machine. I is so bad that I can't even play a youtube video...
Out of frustration, I ended up formatting my SSD and reinstalling windows, I got rid of McAffee but reinstalled Malwarebyte. So far everything is working perfectly with a background CPU usage at 0-2%.
My guess it that an update had messed up a driver or something (I will never know) which caused the issue? Or it was undetected malware, however, I have am very careful while browsing and have not had a malware infection for many years... I have been using computers since the release of the 80286.
Anyway, thanks for your help and messages, the issue seems to be fixed for now.