Hey everyone! I just started my new job in IT support at a mid-sized company and I've been faced with an issue on one of the finance department's laptops. The employee reports that the CPU usage spikes to 100% for no apparent reason, even when they're only using Chrome, Excel, and QuickBooks Pro. The laptop has an i7 13th gen processor. I noticed in the task manager that the Volume Shadow Copy Service is consuming most of the CPU, which seems odd. I've tried some troubleshooting steps like disabling unnecessary startup apps, but the laptop still freezes unexpectedly. I'd really appreciate any suggestions or steps I can take to bring the CPU utilization back to normal. Thanks!
4 Answers
A great tool to use is Process Explorer from Sysinternals. It helps you see processes that aren't listed in the regular task manager, which might be hogging CPU resources. Having the entire Sysinternals suite on a USB can also be really helpful for in-depth troubleshooting.
It might be worth checking the power-saving settings as well. Sometimes these can throttle the processor frequency to save energy, which can cause performance issues.
Be sure to check which program is consuming the CPU by going into the task manager. There's a chance that a rogue Chrome extension could be the culprit, so keep an eye out for that.
First, you should consider temporarily disabling the Volume Shadow Copy Service to relieve some CPU pressure. You can check this by typing 'msconfig' and looking for services that start up—make sure to hide Microsoft services to see everything else. If you don’t spot anything unusual there, head to the task manager's details section and look for any rogue processes. Let me know what you find!
Related Questions
Can't Load PhpMyadmin On After Server Update
Redirect www to non-www in Apache Conf
How To Check If Your SSL Cert Is SHA 1
Windows TrackPad Gestures