Windows 7 system processor overload. Why is the processor loaded and how to reduce CPU load? Is there overheating? Checking CPU Temperature

15.09.2023 -

Hello.

One of the most common reasons why a computer slows down is CPU load, sometimes by incomprehensible applications and processes.

Not long ago, on a friend’s computer, I had to deal with an “incomprehensible” CPU load, which sometimes reached 100%, although there were no open programs that could load it like that (by the way, the processor was a fairly modern Intel inside Core i3). The problem was solved by reinstalling the system and installing new drivers (but more on that later...).

Actually, I decided that this problem was quite popular and would be of interest to a wide range of users. In the article I will give recommendations that will help you figure out why the processor is loaded and how to reduce the load on it. So…

1. Question No. 1 - what program is the processor loaded with?

To find out what percentage of the processor is loaded, open the Windows task manager.

Buttons: Ctrl+Shift+Esc (or Ctrl+Alt+Del) .

By the way, very often the problem arises in the following way: you were working, for example, in Adobe Photoshop, then you closed the program, but it remained in the processes (or this happens all the time with some games). As a result, they “eat” resources, and not small ones. Because of this, the computer starts to slow down. Therefore, very often the first recommendation in such cases is to restart the PC (since in this case such applications will be closed), or go to the task manager and remove such a process.

2. Question No. 2 - there is CPU load, but there are no applications and processes that load them! What to do?

When setting up one of the computers, I encountered an incomprehensible CPU load - there is a load, but there are no processes! The screenshot below shows how it looks in the task manager.

On the one hand, it’s surprising: the “Display processes of all users” checkbox is turned on, there is nothing among the processes, and the PC load jumps by 16-30%!

To see all processes that load your PC - run the free utility Process Explorer. Next, sort all processes by load (CPU column) and see if there are any suspicious “elements” there (the task manager does not show some processes, unlike Process Explorer).

Link to office Process Explorer website: https://technet.microsoft.com/ru-ru/bb896653.aspx

Process Explorer - system interrupts and DPCs load the processor by ~20%. When everything is in order, usually the CPU load associated with Hardware interrupts and DPCs does not exceed 0.5-1%.

In my case, the culprit turned out to be system interrupts and DPCs. By the way, I will say that sometimes fixing the PC load associated with them is quite a troublesome and complicated task (besides, sometimes they can load the processor not only by 30%, but by 100%!).

The fact is that the CPU is loaded due to them in several cases: problems with drivers; viruses; the hard drive does not operate in DMA mode, but in PIO mode; problems with peripheral equipment (for example, printer, scanner, network cards, flash and HDD drives, etc.).

1. Problems with drivers

The most common reason for CPU usage is system interrupts. I recommend doing the following: boot the PC in safe mode and see if there is a load on the processor: if there is none, the reason is very high in the drivers! In general, the easiest and fastest way in this case is to reinstall the Windows system and then install one driver at a time and see if the CPU load appears (as soon as it appears, you have found the culprit).

Most often, the culprit here is network cards + universal drivers from Microsoft, which are installed immediately when installing Windows (sorry for the tautology). I recommend downloading and updating all drivers from the official website of your laptop/computer manufacturer.

Plus, sometimes check your computer with third-party programs (which look for advertising modules adware, mailware, etc.): more about them.

3. Hard disk operating mode

The operating mode of the HDD can also affect the loading and performance of the PC. In general, if the hard drive is not operating in DMA mode, but in PIO mode, you will immediately notice it with terrible “brakes”!

4. Problems with peripheral equipment

Disconnect everything from your laptop or PC, leave the bare minimum (mouse, keyboard, monitor). I also recommend paying attention to device Manager, whether there will be any installed devices with yellow or red icons (this means either there are no drivers or they are not working correctly).

How to open device manager? The easiest way is to open the Windows Control Panel and type the word “dispatcher” into the search bar. See screenshot below.

Device Manager: there are no drivers for devices (disk drives), they may not work correctly (and most likely not work at all).

3. Question No. 3 - could the processor load be caused by overheating and dust?!

The reason why the processor may be overloaded and the computer will start to slow down may be due to overheating. Typically, characteristic signs of overheating are:

increased hum of the cooler: the number of revolutions per minute increases because of this the noise from it becomes stronger. If you have a laptop: then by passing your hand next to the left side (usually there is a hot air outlet on laptops) you will be able to notice how much air is blown out and how hot it is. Sometimes the hand doesn’t tolerate it (this is not good)!
braking and slowdown of the computer (laptop);
refusal to boot with errors indicating failures in the cooling system, etc.

For example, in the AIDA 64 program, to view the processor temperature, you need to open the “ Computer/sensor«.

AIDA64 - processor temperature 49 degrees. C.

How do you know which temperature is critical for your processor and which is normal?

The easiest way is to look at the manufacturer's website; this information is always indicated there. It is quite difficult to give general figures for different processor models.

In general, on average, if the processor operating temperature is not higher than 40 degrees. Ts. - everything is fine. Above 50g. C. - may indicate problems in the cooling system (for example, an abundance of dust). However, for some processor models this temperature is the normal operating temperature. This especially applies to laptops, where limited space makes it difficult to organize a good cooling system. By the way, on laptops and 70 gr. C. - may be normal temperature under load.

Cleaning from dust: when, how and how many times?

In general, it is advisable to clean your computer or laptop from dust 1-2 times a year (although a lot depends on your room, some have more dust, some have less...). Once every 3-4 years it is advisable to replace the thermal paste. Both operations are not complicated and can be performed independently.

To avoid repetition, I will provide a couple of links below...

How to clean your computer from dust and replace thermal paste:

Cleaning a laptop from dust, how to wipe the screen:

That's all for today. By the way, if the measures suggested above did not help, you can try reinstalling Windows (or even replacing it with a newer one, for example, changing Windows 7 to Windows 8). Sometimes, it’s easier to reinstall the OS than to look for the cause: you’ll save time and money... In general, you sometimes need to make backup copies (when everything works well).

Good day!

I think almost every user, with at least a little experience, has encountered a similar problem: you work and work on the computer, and then you begin to notice that it somehow reacts slowly to pressing the mouse or keyboard buttons, it slows down...

Very often the reason for slow operation and brakes is the processor load, sometimes it reaches 100%!

Solving this problem is not always easy, especially since the CPU can be loaded for no apparent reason (i.e., you may not have launched any resource-intensive programs: games, video editors, etc.).

In this article, I will look at the sequence of actions that can be taken to remove CPU load and return the computer to normal performance.

The first thing to try is to identify the process or program that is using the CPU. As happens in most cases: some program (or game) was launched, then the user exited it, but the process with the game remained, which loads the processor...

What process or program is the processor loaded

The fastest way to determine which program is hogging the CPU is to call Task Manager(buttons: Ctrl+Shift+Esc ).

In Task Manager, open the Processes tab and sort applications by CPU load. In the screenshot below, you can see that the lion's share of the CPU (~84%) is consumed by the Firefox browser (although I don't even have it running...). If you have such a “hidden” program, you can close it right away from the task manager (just right-click on it...).

Note

Windows has its own resource monitoring, which can also be used to view CPU, memory, disk and network load. To call it, press the buttons Win+R, then enter into the line "Open" team resmon and press Enter .

Important!

In some cases, the task manager does not allow you to calculate the reason for the processor load. By the way, the processor may not be loaded at 100%, but, say, at 20-50%...

If the task manager does not give you any food for thought, I recommend using one utility - Process Explorer(by the way, located on the Microsoft website...).

Process Explorer (search for the “invisible” cause of the brakes)

An excellent program that has helped me out more than once! Her main area of work is to show you ALL the processes and programs running on the computer (probably no one will escape her...). This way, you can determine for sure which process is consuming the CPU.

The screenshot below is very indicative:

System idle process- this is an indicator in % of system inactivity. Those. in the first half of the screen below - the processor is almost 95% idle (this is exactly how it should be if a couple of programs are open on it: a browser, a player);
and on the second part of the screen System idle process is 65%, but hardware interrupts and DPCs as much as 20% (and sometimes reaching 70-80%! This shouldn't happen. In general, interrupts (these are system interrupts) during normal operation rarely go beyond a few percent! This is the reason why your computer slows down and loads!
By the way, very often the system is loaded by the svchosts.exe process. In general, this is a system process, but there are a number of viruses that masquerade as it and pretend to be it. Below we will consider the question of how to catch them...

Process Explorer: in the first part of the screenshot - everything is fine, in the second - the processor is ~20% loaded with system interrupts (hardware interrupts and DPCs).

If the CPU loads interrupts...

If the problem is related hardware interrupts and DPCs- then most likely the problems are related to the drivers. More precisely, with their conflict with each other, and even more likely, incompatibility with your Windows OS. Moreover, even if your version of Windows is listed in the driver description, this is not a 100% guarantee of compatibility.

Pay special attention to the drivers: video cards, chipset mat. boards, network card, Wi-Fi, sound card. I recommend downloading several versions of them at once and trying them one by one.

Less commonly, the problem is associated with viruses, and even less often with peripheral equipment: printer, scanner, network cards, etc.

Checking and updating drivers

Sometimes choosing the right drivers for a computer/laptop is not as easy as it seems at first glance... In general, usually, the new version of the driver works better than the old one (but sometimes it’s exactly the opposite). If your CPU usage is related to hardware interrupts and DPCs- I recommend:

try installing drivers from the official website of your equipment manufacturer. Usually, this requires identifying the manufacturer - for this you can use a special one. utilities for determining PC characteristics -;
If you didn’t find the site or couldn’t identify the manufacturer, you can try using some special one. driver update utility:
If during installation you have problems removing the old driver from the system, I recommend this instruction:

To find out if you have devices on your system for which there are no drivers, open device Manager . To do this, call the "Run" menu - buttons Win+R, enter devmgmt.msc(example in the screenshot below).

Virus scan

Viruses can be the cause of anything... Usually, when the processor is loaded due to viruses, you can find some process that is loading the system. Most often, this process is systemic: for example, viruses disguise themselves as a process svchost.exe- even an experienced user cannot immediately find and identify a virus among real processes (but this file will be discussed below)...

In Windows Xp, 7 - you can press the F8 key several times during boot - a “black” window should appear with a choice of boot options;
in Windows 8, 10 - click Win+R, enter the command msconfig. Further in the section select Windows OS and check the box next to the item "Safe mode" . Save the settings and restart your PC (screenshot below).

And it is advisable to run a virus scan from safe mode. To do this, it is not necessary to have an antivirus installed on your computer - there are special utilities that do not need to be installed.

Periphery equipment

If the problem has not yet been found, I recommend trying to disconnect everything unnecessary from the laptop (computer): printer, scanner, mouse, etc.

I will also once again draw attention to device manager (more precisely on the drivers). Perhaps drivers for some peripheral equipment are not installed in the system and the exclamation mark is on...

Pay special attention to old devices that may work in the new Windows OS, but you installed drivers for them “forcibly” (for example, Windows could warn that there is no signature, and you continued the installation)...

In general, it is quite difficult to find the true culprit in this case. If the processor is not loaded in safe mode, I recommend trying to remove drivers for peripheral equipment one by one and see how the load behaves.

How to remove old or unnecessary “firewood” -

Svchost.exe is loading the processor - what is it?

The file loads the processor very often svchost.exe- at least that's what he says Task Manager. The point is that this is the main process for loading services - i.e. roughly speaking, a necessary system process that cannot be avoided...

There are two possible cases here:

Viruses are often disguised as this process, and it is difficult to distinguish real svchost from masquerading - even experienced users are not always able to do so;
real svchost may load the system in certain cases.

How to determine which svchost.exe file is system and which is not?

When you launch it, you need to go to the menu Service/Process Manager (see screenshot below). Next you will see ALL processes in the system - they need to be sorted by name (this is more convenient, it seems to me).

The point is: all system processes that AVZ knows about are marked green color. Those. if you have on the list svchost black colors - look at them very carefully, they are most likely viral.

By the way, with the help of this AVZ you can analyze all other suspicious processes.

Turn off automatic Windows updates

Often svchost loads the processor due to automatic Windows updates being enabled. I suggest turning it off (there’s nothing wrong with that - you’ll just manually check for updates a couple of times a month - click the mouse 1-2 times...).

First you need to open the tab services. The fastest way to do this is to press the button WIN+R, enter services.msc and press Enter(as in the screenshot below).

startup type set "Disabled";
and click the "Stop" button.

Save the settings and restart your computer.

Is there overheating? Checking the CPU temperature!

A possible reason for the processor loading may be overheating. Moreover, if everything was fine with you before, this does not mean at all that now it cannot start to overheat.

Most often, the cause of overheating is:

dust(especially if the system unit has not been cleaned from it for a long time). Dust forgets the ventilation holes, air begins to circulate poorly in the device case - and the hot air from the processor remains in place, and the temperature begins to rise. The easiest way to get rid of dust is to open the cover of the system unit and blow out the dust with a vacuum cleaner, turning on the reverse mode. With laptops everything is more complicated - if you have never taken it apart before, I recommend giving it to specialists...
high room temperature . This usually happens in hot weather in the summer, when the temperature outside the window can rise significantly. In this case, you can open the side cover of the system unit and direct a regular fan towards it. There are special cooling pads for sale for laptops.
broken cooler (or it could also become clogged with dust). The advice here is simple - replace it or clean it.

Signs that may indicate overheating:

To find out the processor temperature- I recommend using some utility to determine the characteristics of your PC. For example, I like Speccy and Aida 64. You can see a screenshot of the processor temperature from Speccy below (t=49 °C, degrees Celsius).

Utilities for viewing computer characteristics -

What should the processor temperature be?

A very popular question that cannot be answered definitively. The fact is that different manufacturers have different critical temperatures.

For personal computer

In general, the ideal option is to look at the model of your processor and open the manufacturer’s website: critical temperatures are always indicated on it.

Generally speaking, if the temperature of your processor is up to 40 °C (degrees Celsius), then everything is fine with it, the cooling system can handle it. Temperatures above 50 °C may indicate problems with the cooling system (or a large amount of dust). Anything above 60 degrees must be carefully examined and action taken: clean it from dust, install additional coolers (or replace the old one).

For laptop

As for laptops, the bar is somewhat different. Since space in a laptop is limited, the processors here heat up higher. For example, it is not uncommon for many processors to have an operating temperature under load of about 70 °C. When idle, this level is usually about 40-50 °C. In general, you should start to worry (for most modern laptops) if the processor temperature rises above 75-80 °C (at least check if this is normal for your device.

Most often, such a high temperature is reached when running editors, games, and other heavy applications.

By the way, many experienced users (and some specialists) echo the critical temperature of 105 °C for modern laptops. I will say this, the laptop can and will work at 90-95 °C, and even, possibly, at 100 °C - but the main question is: how much? In general, the question is debatable for many...

Last tip. Sometimes finding and eliminating the causes of high processor load and computer brakes is quite tedious and not easy. In such cases, I recommend trying some with different OSes, or replacing your Windows 7, say, with a newer Windows 8/10 - the problem can be solved with just a 10-minute reinstallation of the OS...

Well, that's all for me. Good luck!

Most often in our practice, the main reason for CPU load reaching 100% is overheating. Many users do not know that dust getting into the radiators of cooling systems can significantly reduce the performance of devices. When a processor overheats, it goes into throttling mode, starts skipping clock cycles, and performance decreases.

To check the processor for overheating, look at the temperature of the processor without load and under load. We compare these temperatures with the maximum permissible declared by the processor manufacturer. The maximum permissible temperature can be found on the processor manufacturer's website in the specifications.

Viral activity

When there are a lot of viruses on a computer, this also reduces system performance. Viruses, like regular programs, consume processor resources, this can lead to 100% CPU load. I talk a lot about virus removal in my YouTube channel, and be sure to read and follow. After completely cleaning your computer from viruses, there will be no problem with CPU load!

Driver problems

Another reason for CPU usage is system interrupts, in other words a problem with the drivers. I recommend doing the following: boot your computer in safe mode and see if there is an increased load on the processor. If there is no load, there is a very high probability that the reason is in the drivers, because the drivers do not load in safe mode! The simplest solution to this problem is to remove all the drivers and then install one driver at a time and see if the CPU load appears, as soon as the download starts - you have found the culprit.

Most often, the culprit here is network cards + universal drivers from Microsoft, which are installed immediately when installing Windows. I recommend downloading and updating all drivers from the official website of your equipment manufacturer. I showed how to do this.

Elementarily weak percentage that doesn’t work ツ

For some reason, many people think that their ancient processor should still run fine and without any brakes. But this is not so, now digital technologies are developing very quickly and sometimes budget processors of just two or three years ago are no longer capable of anything today. Even if you have a top-end processor from 10 years ago, this does not mean that it can cope with modern tasks. Perhaps this is where the heavy load on your processor lies, think about it. If you are not sure, ask other owners of the same processor how it works for them in the same tasks. Often they bring computers to us and say: my video on the Internet has started to slow down. We look at why this is happening and it turns out that the new video codec does not support the old processor. We explain this to the client, but he doesn’t believe it and motivates it by the fact that 2 weeks ago everything was working for him, but now it’s slowing down. The problem was that the site on which he watched the video had switched to a new video encoding method, which heavily loaded the old processors, but gave a higher quality video picture.

Autoload full of junk

Another problem that occurs for inexperienced users is that startup is heavily clogged with unnecessary applications. After all these applications are loaded (the computer will take a very long time to load), they load the processor with their activity. Startup needs to be cleaned, you can even remove everything from there except the antivirus and programs that you actually use. You can do this through the program in the startup section or write MSCONFIG in the search and go to the startup section and disable what is unnecessary.

Antivirus activity

The hard drive is loading the processor

The hard drive can load the processor up to 100% under some conditions. Most often this is due to the fact that the disk begins to fail. I wrote about this in detail in the article -. Follow all the recommendations and your disk and processor will probably stop loading up to 100%.

Problems with peripheral equipment

Disconnect everything from your laptop or PC, leave the bare minimum (mouse, keyboard, monitor). Then connect all the necessary devices one by one and check the processor’s reaction. Perhaps this way you will find the culprit of this problem. I also recommend paying attention to the device manager to see if there are any installed devices with yellow or red icons; this means either there are no drivers or they are not working correctly. As I wrote above, this can create a load on the processor.

A huge number of running processes

Everything can be simple and trivial, perhaps you just run too many applications at the same time and the processor simply can’t handle it all. The processor may be powerful, but everything has a limit. Open the task manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) sort processes by load per percent and stop/disable the heaviest processes. If you don’t know which process is responsible for what, you can look up information on the Internet. I will show you more in the video on this page.

Some processes cannot be tracked through a regular task manager (these may be viral processes), then download and check all processes with it, you can also check the process for a digital signature, as well as for viral activity!

Svchost.exe is loading the processor!

With the svchost.exe process, not everything is so simple, there are 2 options: either it is a viral activity or a system process that actually loads the processor. If the load is created by a virus process, then most often it can be seen through Process Explorer; it will be launched as an administrator or from your account. It is enough to simply stop the process and clean it from viruses. If svchost.exe is really a system process, then try disabling automatic Windows updates in services and also try turning off the antivirus, it may conflict with other software.

In the vastness of the RuNet, I found another interesting method, but you can use it only at your own peril and risk! Find the Prefetch folder, located in the C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch section and delete it. Then find the Tasks folder (C:\WINDOWS\system32\Tasks), open it and delete all files from it. Now launch the task manager, delete the entire svchost.exe task tree, and then restart the computer. I talked about this folder in the article about the load on the screw.

Lack of power supply

Well, the last thing that can cause an unnatural load on the processor is the power supply. If the power supply does not supply enough power to the computer, the processor can be loaded up to 100% of simple tasks. I recommend checking the power supply and all computer hardware using .

Overloading the processor of a computer or laptop can be caused by a number of reasons - from technical obsolescence of hardware to viruses that load the system.

High CPU usage in itself is not a problem. All resources can be consumed when launching games, ultra-high quality videos, video editing applications, archivers, and antivirus checks. First of all, you need to check whether the processor is really overloaded or whether other problems are causing the slow operation.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager and click on the CPU column to sort. You can also get to the dispatcher by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and selecting the desired item in the menu that appears.

Normally, a task list should look something like this. When the load is high, one or more tasks will consume most of the CPU time. If one of the applications takes 50-100% of its power constantly, this may be a symptom of a problem.

For example, in the screenshot, almost half the power of the i5-2500k processor is occupied by the “Task Manager” and system interrupts, which should not be the case.

Hardware causes of overload

Despite common misconception, it is rarely the cause of CPU overload. The processor is more likely to cause the system to reboot or freeze completely than to operate at 100% power for a long time. However, such cases sometimes occur and the user needs to know how to protect themselves from them.

Outdated equipment

The most common cause of processor overload is an aging PC or laptop. Software does not stand still: if five years ago a single-core processor with a couple of hundred megabytes of RAM was enough for comfortable operation of Google Chrome, now several heavy tabs can use the resources of several cores and several gigabytes. In 2018, for comfortable work you will need a 4-core processor with 6-8 gigabytes of memory.

If you don’t have money for new hardware, try to follow these tips:

Don't run multiple applications at once. This not only makes it difficult for the processor in itself, but RAM that is filled to capacity creates additional load;
If possible, use older versions of programs. Yes, it may be inconvenient and unsafe, but older versions of applications will be much less demanding;
disable unnecessary services and programs in startup. This can be done in the “Startup” and “Services” tabs of the “Task Manager”;
try to avoid situations in which the processor will be loaded at 100% unnecessarily. For example, don't open many browser tabs or 4K videos on a small laptop screen.

Overclocking

The next situation that can cause overload is overclocking or overclocking. There is nothing wrong with overclocking the characteristics of devices in itself; all major manufacturers provide programs for adjusting the operating frequencies of the processor and video card. However, exceeding processor limits may result in:

overheating;
image artifacts;
errors and application crashes;
freezing;
100% CPU load for trivial tasks.

Here, to check, you should use diagnostic utilities that record the results in the log. For detailed statistics on all components, MSI Afterburner is suitable.

CPU overheating

High temperature itself rarely causes overload directly; more often it destroys the processor or triggers mechanisms that reduce the frequency and voltage on the device to protect it. You can look at the sensors in AIDA64.

How to solve the overheating problem?

Clean the system unit case from dust. Pay special attention to the heatsink and processor fan. For a laptop, the cleaning procedure should be carried out at least once every one and a half to two years;
If the computer has been in use for two years or more, remove the thermal paste between the fan and the processor cover. Apply the new one in an even layer;
if standard cooling cannot cope or the cooler does not work, replace it with a more powerful one. Preferably with a massive aluminum radiator with copper tubes;
Do not block the ventilation holes of the system unit when installing it in place.

Note! The normal temperature of a working processor is about 40 degrees; at 70-80, the BIOS protection mechanisms are activated.

Software causes of overload

It is much easier to get 100% CPU load using software than using hardware - you just need to make a mistake in the antivirus scan settings or download a program that is incompatible with the new system.

Antiviruses and viruses

Of the entire list of reasons for possible problems that lead to 100% processor load, problems most often arise with antiviruses. Real-time file checks are a resource-intensive task that can take forever if configured incorrectly.

On weak computers, installing a cloud antivirus, like Panda Cloud Cleaner, will help. It is much more demanding on the quality of the Internet, but the load on the processor is minimal.

In Windows 10, you can use the built-in Defender, which is quite sufficient for home tasks.

The other side of the coin is viruses on an unprotected PC. Malicious programs can use your computer for mining or as a gateway for DDOS attacks. For one-time cleaning of existing problems, use the Dr.Web Cureit utility!

Automatic update

The cause of the overload may be a failed update of the operating system or drivers. Such problems occurred in 2015 among users of beta versions of Windows 10. To solve the problem, try installing different versions of drivers, rolling back updates through a system restore point, or disabling them completely.

In Windows 10, disabling updates has no visible effect on overload protection.

Background applications

A number of programs run in the background to support their functionality. For example, Skype and LibreOffice are permanently in RAM for quick loading. In some situations, this can become a problem - for example, when a program hangs in the background and takes up half or all of the computer's resources.

You can also disable a background application in the “Task Manager” by hovering the mouse cursor over the selected running application and using the “End task” button.