Massive Resources being taken....How??

This is a bit of a mystery here folks. I throw out a lifeline for help to anyone who may have ideas for what could be doing this....

The Problem
The problem is very simply this. I will often find myself getting bogged down on this machine, as I have previous machines, to where clicks or page loads in the browser come to a crawl or even typing in real time can see a delay. Now on past machines, I wouldn't call a 'Stop the damn presses!!' moment. They've been average..at best usually..and not a whole lot to crow about. What I've been eating Top Ramen for a semester to have afforded...IS NOT that class of machine, but the same thing is happening.

What I'm running is an AMD FX 8350 4ghz (Not O/C) 8 Core processor (4 actual, 4 shadowed) with 16gb of RAM on an SSD for primary drive and an SSD for the windows swap file and cache drive. I.E... I've hurt badly and gone broke for months so I wouldn't have to deal with this. Yet... Here we are.

Attempted Solutions

I run MS Essentials, scan once a month or so with Trend Micro as a secondary and scan a couple times a week with Malware Bytes (Quick scan generally with a full system-wide at least once a month). Nothing is picked up but the usual spyware crap everyone picks up by just surfing the net. No biggy for that and not capable of doing this.

Symptom ...or, said another way... WTF?!?!

Now as I mentioned, despite the power of this box, I *STILL* find myself with moments where even my typing buffer is lagged to the point of lagging individual keys by maybe 1/4 second. Enough to see a processing or other bottleneck being choked solid.

When I went to task manager a short time ago, CPU was at 60% and, as I've seen before when I've caught this and pulled it up to see what was using my system instead of ME...it fell from that 60% range down to a NORMAL 3-5% processor level. From experience, I know it'll stay there too...for as long as I have Task Manager or Process Explorer open to view it. It's NEVER once bogged my machine while either has been open to view and catch the bugger in the act ....but it will bog down again. I have no doubt.

What, for the love of sanity, is doing this??? My full 3-D games blowing full tilt on max everything don't generate that level of processor use. Nothing close to it. After Effects and 3-D rendering sure does ...but that's about the only single-task effort I've honestly seen tax this processor like that.

*FTR I am using Windows 8.1. This has happened previously (as noted on other boxes) on Vista and Windows 7 as well. Also, I have...at times..played with Distributed computing applications like the Genome project and SETI ..but nothing like that has ever touched this box....that I chose, anyway.

Any ideas??

I have noticed the delay in writing (sometimes a full sentence behind, like now), but only here on this site.

Does your browser have a lot of extensions and/or add-on?
Have enough of those and they will slow your browser down.

as a note, when my browser(s) are closed, gaming doesn't have any problems at all.

Ccleaner has a free version that works pretty good at getting a junk files and registry errors. It does however reset something with Microsoft SE making program think it hasn't had a recent scan and recommends you do one after running ccleaner.

I wouldn`t past out the idea of a 3rp party being involved, you are a mod on ATS.

processhacker.sourceforge.net... this will let you see what is using your resources.

"what's making my computer so slow"
says the guy who moderates a conspiracy forum

I'm not a windows 8 guru but ill give it a shot.

There are a few piece of malware that disguise themselves as windows services.

I would check your processes consuming cpu cycles against the services running.

They dont come up in scans. They are sneaky little pesks.

I see you have played with distributed computing environments.

Could it be possible you have boinc or some such other distributed computing software installed as service?

That would cause it to load at start and consume your cycles.


If all else fails i would run msconfig and remove all start up entries except for your anti virus and any drivers specific to your hardware.

It could also be something deeper in your system like in the Rootkit, so getting a Rootkit scanner could posibly find something.

I am no expert though, so this is only a suggestion that i followed at a time i had some mysterious slowdown.

I can't suggest any specific Rootkit scanner as you need some tech knowledge to understand what you are looking at, so if you wannna do this and don't have the knowledge, you might have to look it up.

Here is a selection on freeware rootkit scanners

Click me

Good luck

There are also small java apps that mine bitcoins on unsuspecting target machines.

If you have ever tried to mine before? They are persistent across reboots.

I installed on on accident while looking for a bitcoin mining client.

As bitcoin is also distributed computing. Food for thought.

My PC tends to use a lot of the CPU resources when I haven't touched it for a while. When I come back and start moving the mouse it will drop back down to normal. I found that a bit suspicious so I did some googling and found that this was most likely caused by the indexing service which helps to make searches quicker by indexing all my files, or something like that.

But it sounds like your computer does this even when you are actively using it, which is strange. Maybe google around to see if there's a way to completely disable the indexing service and see if that solves your problem. If it turns out not to be the indexing service then the next thing I would look at is your virus scanner, maybe it is doing regular scans of your system and using up a lot of resources. Try a free anti-virus program and see if that solves your problem (I'd recommend Avira).

Other than those two possibilities the only other thing I can think of is some sort of sneaky virus which is evading detection by all your virus scanners. It's not very likely imo but it could be one of those viruses which uses your computer to mine cryptocurrency for the creator of the virus. That type of virus would certainly use a lot of your CPU resources in order to run the mining algorithms. If you do end up finding a solution let us know because I'm interested in what is causing it.

Hi sir! I think you can try to clean you event viewer on computer Management..clean the aplication viewer and instal viewer..
Hope it help

ChaoticOrder
. It's not very likely imo but it could be one of those viruses which uses your computer to mine cryptocurrency for the creator of the virus. That type of virus would certainly use a lot of your CPU resources in order to run the mining algorithms. If you do end up finding a solution let us know because I'm interested in what is causing it.

Its a lot more likely that you may think.

There are even websites that mine right in the browser.

catt3
processhacker.sourceforge.net... this will let you see what is using your resources.

Good suggestion, can that software create a log which will record the activity? It seems like if the OP can log what applications are using the most CPU resources then he will be able to catch the offender in the act and solve the problem.

I had this problem using Firefox when I tried to reply in ats, someone suggested me to turn of hardware acelaration and it worked

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Try that, hope it helps

Process hacker is a great little program. I recommend it highly.

reply to post by shaneslaughta


The reason I say it's unlikely is because he has scanned his system with several virus scanners which have a very low chance of missing it.

StratosFear
Ccleaner has a free version that works pretty good at getting a junk files and registry errors. It does however reset something with Microsoft SE making program think it hasn't had a recent scan and recommends you do one after running ccleaner.

I wouldn`t past out the idea of a 3rp party being involved, you are a mod on ATS.

edit on 19-1-2014 by StratosFear because: (no reason given)

I appreciate the suggestion on CCleaner and I'll just add here to say I do use it for housekeeping (CCleaner and DeFraggler). It doesn't help on this (which also covers the logs Cheesy suggested, since CC hits those too) but I'll sure add to the chorus of saying it's a very good if not indispensable program to have.


* On being Staff..I've thought of that and someone sufficiently knowledgeable in PC Tech/Security could, in theory, find a way to give substance to that concern ...to word that carefully.

The thing on that is that I've been staff since mid October. This predates that. I've just finally gotten fed up enough to say something and seek advice.

One other thing, if it may help to clarify.... I'm sitting here using the computer when it bogs like this. Definitely not idle...but it'll revert to Idle almost instantly when either Task Manager or Proc Exp open to monitor it. ...almost like whatever it bogging this down is watching very special for those or for that action of viewing processes to happen ..then it shuts down or goes dormant.

When I DO open the process view, it IS showing 60 and sometimes it's been higher for %...and if it took another second or two to crash down to 3-4%, I'd catch whatever was doing it ...but the crash down, literally IS that for description as it'll flash 60...50..30..10..back to normal in the span of a second or two.

it's maddening!

Does anyone know of a monitor/logging program that would record what is running in processes to what % of load at a given time ..without likely triggering what Task Manager and Process Explorer do for shutting down what I'm trying to catch?

Maybe some network monitoring program that logs running processes as a side thing? Anything so I can look back after it goes down or hides..or whatever this is..to see just what had been busy by load, right before that?

ChaoticOrder
reply to post by shaneslaughta

 

The reason I say it's unlikely is because he has scanned his system with several virus scanners which have a very low chance of missing it.

There are several varieties. One major one that is rampant is a java applet. It wont show as a virus at all.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Process hacker can log. It dont use the MS equivalent. Its stand alone.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

If you would like to record the CPU history that it located in your log, start by logging into your Windows account as an administrator. Click on the start button and type perfmon into the search box and hit enter. Next, select the monitoring tools option and then click on the option called Performance Monitor. Click on add and then CPU. Once you click ok, your CPU will be monitored.

www.ask.com...

Just type perfmon into Start > Run and press enter. When the Performance window is open, click on the + sign to add new counters to the graph. The counters are different aspects of how your PC works and are grouped by similarity into groups called "Performance Object".

For your questions, you can choose the "Process", "Memory" and "Processor" performance objects. You then can see these counters in real time

You can also specify the utility to save the performance data for your inspection later. To do this, select "Performance Logs and Alerts" in the left-hand panel. (It's right under the System Monitor console which provides us with the above mentioned counters. If it is not there, click "File" > "Add/remove snap-in", click Add and select "Performance Logs and Alerts" in the list".) From the "Performance Logs and Alerts", create a new monitoring configuration under "Counter Logs". Then you can add the counters, specify the sampling rate, the log format (binary or plain text) and log location.

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