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In this guest post, James Ricketts explores the best methods for troubleshotting high CPU issues on your PC. Learn more about James at the conclusion of this post.

Best Methods For Troubleshooting High CPU Issues On Your PC

Why does the issue of high CPU consumption occur?

Well, the reasons are aplenty, the common ones are:

• Use of software or processes that by nature consume high system resources.
• Unnecessary startup programs.
• Malware infection.
• Outdated Windows, software, and driver files.
• Damaged registry.

When high CPU usage issues occur you are likely to notice that your computer freezes or becomes painstakingly slow. Often the issue gets resolved itself in a couple of minutes or after you close some of the running applications. Other times, the only escape comes through restarting Windows, which is no fun as you risk losing any unsaved data.

Use the guidelines mentioned in this tutorial to diagnose the cause and troubleshoot the issue of repetitive high CPU consumption on your Windows PC.

First, determine the process or application that is reporting high CPU consumption.

To do this, perform the following steps:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del.
2. Click the Processes tab.

Task Manager will open.

You will see the names of all the running processes on the Processes tab. Go through the list to see which process or processes are consuming high amounts of CPU resources—the CPU consumption of each running process is listed on the right-side.

Ok, I’ve identified the culprit process, what do I do next?

After you have identified the culprit process, identify the program or software with which the process is associated. If the identification is not obvious, you may search for this information on the Internet.

In case the software to which the process is associated is one that you do not really require, then you can simply uninstall the software to resolve the issue. In case you require the software, then you need to determine if the culprit process is a necessary one or not (again, you may search for this information on the Internet).

If your findings show that the process is non-essential, disable the corresponding service. Next, remove the process from your startup programs. These two steps are fairly simple, as illustrated in the example below.

Let’s suppose you find that aawservice.exe (the process is part of Ad-Aware 2007, which is an antispyware software) is constantly consuming inappropriate CPU resources. To fix the issue, run the services.msc command and disable the attached service from the Services window that is displayed.

Next, run the msconfig command and remove the process from your Startup programs list. While you are at it, you are well-advised to remove other unnecessary startup processes, such as khalmnpr.exe, or ssvagent.exe that may be selected to launch at system startup on your computer.

The culprit process is an essential part of a legitimate software – how do I resolve the issue now?

In such cases, first determine if your present system configuration meets the minimum requirements to run the particular software. Next, perform the following maintenance activities and see if the issue is fixed.

• Update your Windows, software, and driver files.
• Run a complete malware scan using your protective software.
• Clean your registry thoroughly using a reliable registry cleaner.

The issue of high CPU consumption is likely to be resolved after you perform the above essential maintenance tasks. If the issue persists, then the only viable solution is to switch to another software. One that provides you the same features but consumes less resources.

James Ricketts is a writer whose work can be seen at Instant-Registry-Fixes.org. To find out more about his work or to contact him, please visit Instant-Registry-Fixes.org.

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