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cpu usage is typically 2 to 6% except exactly every 2 min it spikes to 50% for 5 or 6 sec. This has severe effects on my aces high on line flying game such as i hit the ground or overshoot a target before it unfreezes.
system
gigabyte ga-81915p-duo pro 3 ghz
1 g ddr2
vt6410 raid 0 striped
radeon x800xt
xp pro
audigy sound card

things ive tried
lots of program and file deletions
lots of scans nortons, sym corp edition, spykiller, system mechanic 5, micros antispyware , registry healer,
defrags and cleanups
msconfig, went as far as disabling all startups and services
3 visits by "proffesionals"

in task mgr, only the "system" cpu usage jumps to 50%,no other task shows any unusual activity.the spike is an identical repeat in one cpu graph. in 2 cpu graph it is usually all in first graph but can split and show on both cpu graphs with 2nd cpu spike reducing to 0 after several 2 min cycles.

HELP

JOZEPI

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Dani AI

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Good troubleshooting by and useful diagnostic nudges from and @Nicentral. Periodic, short-lived CPU activity that lives in kernel/privileged time is usually a driver or interrupt/DPC issue, so the most effective next steps are kernel-level tracing and controlled driver testing rather than another round of surface scans.

Capture the offending interval with tools that show kernel stacks: use Process Explorer to inspect the System process threads and show stack traces, and use Process Monitor for correlated file/registry I/O if needed. For a definitive root-cause, record a short trace with the Windows Performance Toolkit (xperf/WPR/WPA) and analyze DPC/ISR and CPU stacks — see the WPT overview at .

Clean out non-present/duplicate device entries before reinstalling drivers. In a Command Prompt set the environment variable and open Device Manager:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc

Then uninstall hidden/ghost devices. Microsoft documents this at .

When rebuilding, install in this order: update BIOS/firmware, chipset INF first, storage/RAID drivers (load during setup for older Windows), then video, network, audio and other peripherals, finishing with vendor utilities and antivirus. Use Driver Verifier to stress-test suspect drivers — only on a test machine or after a full backup, since it can force a crash to reveal bad drivers. If traces point at DPC/ISR from a vendor driver, roll back or use a different signed driver from the hardware vendor.

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Member Avatar for Member #33065

Use the system performance monitor to see what's going on.

Open Performance Monitor, choose processes and highlight all of them except the idle process and add them to the graph. Look for the spike and it should tell you which one is pegging the cpu.

Andy

Member Avatar for jozepi1

Thank you Nicentral,
I took your good advice and have learned quite a bit. I have found that the glitch is in % priveleged cpu time with 2 threads triggering during the "event". System 24 and system 25 threads trigger back to back. Search turned up system 24 ref. in ati graphics card and kodak software. No results on system 25. I'll let you know what else I find out.
Thanks Again
Jozepi

Member Avatar for Member #33065

I'm glad that helped. The Performance analyzer is a great tool for finding processes that are running out of spec. If you find that you are getting spikes from hardware processes, you should look into updating the drivers for the hardware.

Andy

Member Avatar for jozepi1

Yes, along those lines, i got into shadow devices and ghosted drivers in device manager and found multiple listings for some drivers. Notably ati files, sound card and game controller files. Im working my way towards wiping out the hard drive and starting over. Still not quite sure about the raid drivers, chipset drivers and what order to install dif. programs. Its been a good learning exp. so far. Also been playing with Sarah analyzer,hoped my new hitech system would rate better, time will tell.

Jozepi (advanced beginner)

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