SCREENSHOT
OK so I've had a nice jump scare. I thought somehow I got one of those nasty bitcoin miner trojans or viruses. Last night I opened the task manager to kill the game Rust since it crashed. Then I realised that the CPU row was red at 99%. I rebooted thinking the game must have caused that and it was still at 99%.
Damn, entered panic mode and made a pre-start analysis on Avast and nothing showed up
So I've read somewhere that bad chipset drivers may be causing this, but I've got all of them installed from the Gigabyte website (for GA-Z77-DS3H v1.0)
I've downloaded Windows Sysinternal's Procexp and it shows something tottaly different
Tried with PC Wizard and it too shows idling at 6-7%
who should I trust?
I'd explore which process or service is hogging up all the CPU cycles, at least according the Resource Monitor and Task Manager. Each utility can report differently depending on how resources are used. For an example, on Linux, more often than not, almost all RAM will be in use for caching at any given time, however, most every resource monitor will report the RAM in use for caching as free/available as it can be freed up and used instantly for another process, despite the fact that, in reality, it's already in use. I know it's not an apples to apples comparison, but you get the point - both can be right, and will report differently depending on how the resources are being used.
I use the following for various things and second checking.
1. HWmonitor (best free tool for temps and voltages)
2. CPU-Z (best free tool for CPU specifics besides what is found in HWmonitor, also includes RAM/Mobo/GPU specs)
3. Speccy (Basically a combination of CPU-Z and HWmonitor which is also free; includes graphics and more things)
4. AIDA64 (Offers all of the above functionality and much more, but is not free. It offers a commercial trial; it also includes benchmarking/stress testing tools.)
I dont trust built in windows monitoring one bit. I use it as another tool, but it is widely inaccurate. For example, just earlier today I was downloading a torrent at about 600kb/s. I looked at the default task manager tool and found the outbound and inbound were way over what the torrent client was showing. I thought I may have had other apps running, but that wouldnt have accounted for the speed. utorrent said it was 600 down and the task manager said it was 7mb/s. I had steam open and nothing else besides utorrent. I closed steam and made sure no other apps were running. So I decided to pause the torrent. When I did so the speed in the manager went to 0. When I unpaused it, it went back up to 7mb/s. I checked it with AIDA64 and it was showing about the same speed of utorrent. 600 - 700kb/s (but that is a given as it was fluctuating in utorrent quite rapidly).
@jerm1027
The problem is, there's no process eating nearly as much CPU % as the windows task manager / resource monitor report. It changes all over the place. At one second avast is reported to be using 55%, the next second goes to 2% and another process takes it's first place with like 80% (like the logitech software centre) and so on.
If you see this screenshot, you will realise that only the built in windows tools are reporting that crazy activity. Both PC Wizard (5%) and Process Explorer (12%) show the machine as idling below 20% at any time, even with several programs open (steam, chrome, viber, skype, etc)
What is baffling me is that this didn't happen berfore, it just kinda started doing that and now it wont stop doing it. I didn't update any chipset drivers. I'm suspecting a windows update could've done this. Is this possible?
@Ancient Evil God
I already have PC Wizard and CPU-Z G1 there. I guess the HWMonitor would report exactly the same since it's made by CPUID as well. Aida was bundled with one of my computers several years ago and I found it a bit lackluster comparing it against the free pcwizard. I used Sysinternal's Process explorer since it's practically a microsoft tool.
Quote from Sysinternal's site: "The Sysinternals web site was created in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell to host their advanced system utilities and technical information. Whether you’re an IT Pro or a developer, you’ll find Sysinternals utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications."
"En julio de 2006, Microsoft adquirió Sysinternals." (july 2006: Microsoft acquired Sysinternals)
