# CPU Spikes



## OctoberRust (Jan 12, 2006)

I recently have been getting this HUGE problem with CPU spikes.

At idle with barely any processes running, I have huge spikes just as much, but they are from 0%-7% CPU to about 80% CPU instantaneously.

When I am watching something, using roughly 20% CPU, I get huge spikes to the point where everything starts to freeze for seconds, and programs freeze, etc. etc.

Here is a view of the task manager when I am experiencing spikes..









Now, that's at idle, I am not running anything in the background, downloading, and I also ran SpeedFan to show you guys the temperature of everything.










Keep in mind this was seconds after I turned on my computer, so it hasn't heated up, but that's usually the temperature I operate at, my case is very well ventilated. HD1 is rarely ever on, since it is my Linux HDD, I use it for programming.

I tried to repair windows, with some luck. The spikes subside for times now, at idle, I experience spikes, but its unnoticeable. It is only when I am really just watching a movie, or something along those lines, playing games is even fine and fast for me with no spikes, but once I start watching movies, or talking on a lot of AIM windows, it starts to skip.

I am wondering is there anyway to fix this? Linux seems to run just fine without any spikes so I am linking this with some sort of Windows problem with my CPU.

My CPU is a Pentium 4 630, with HT Technology enabled.
Mobo is a P5N32-SLi Deluxe.

[Edit]
Okay, after the reinstallation. I just noticed that while playing a movie, the spikes remain fairly low, jumping from 11 to about 50. But it still freezes from time to time, even when it doesn't reach 100%, like at 33%, it has frozen for me for a split second five times in a row.


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## chauffeur2 (Feb 7, 2006)

Hello OctoberRust,

Its normal at start up for your CPU to 'spike' to 100%, whilst its loading all your system programs.
Perhaps you could post your full system specs here, and include the make/model of your PSU.
Have a look at the information links in my signature about posting specs and "Everest™Home Edition".


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## OctoberRust (Jan 12, 2006)

chauffeur2 said:


> Hello OctoberRust,
> 
> Its normal at start up for your CPU to 'spike' to 100%, whilst its loading all your system programs.
> Perhaps you could post your full system specs here, and include the make/model of your PSU.
> Have a look at the information links in my signature about posting specs and "Everest™Home Edition".


Most of that information in your posting system specs topic is included on the left, as far as the PSU goes, it is a 650W power supply, very generic for what it's worth, didn't have the budget to buy an arctic silver. But those spikes weren't at the start of my PC, after all the system processes loaded up, after like three minutes or so, and I could run programs and such opening them up, it still continued to spike, it never ever stops spiking, not even after 1 hour of doing nothing.

I had someone look at my specs before with this same problem, and they said my PSU could be the problem, but I really just want to make sure, because other people say I am making the minimum and that it shouldn't be doing this.

As you can see in the SpeedFan display, the voltages are in the bottom.


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## chauffeur2 (Feb 7, 2006)

Hi again OctoberRust,

Thank you for the explanation, which has now given me other ideas as to what might be causing this issue.

To eliminate them one-by-one, I would like you to go to the link: "The 5 Steps" in my signature; read and follow the instructions carefully; then, post a HJT Log in the HJT Forum. 
The reason for this is, I believe that there might be a possibility of there being a malware/spyware infection on your computer, and before we can continue with any further hardware related diagnostics, we need to make certain that your machine is "clean".
Now when you post your HJT Log in the HJT Forum, please do two things:
Firstly, make mention of the fact in your post, that you have been referred there by the Hardware Tech Team. 
Secondly, please be patient when waiting for an initial reply from one of the trained analysts, as the HJT Forum is usually very busy; so, if you have not had a reply in, say, 48 hours, go back in to your HJT post, and type *bump*.
This will then bring your post back to the first page, and you will more than likely be assisted then.

Good Luck with it, and when they give you the 'all clear' at HJT, come back here and let us know if your issue has been resolved, or if we need to continue assisting you. :wave:


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## aksjdfklsj (Jan 19, 2009)

I had the CPU spiking problem as well. Here's what I learned and how I resolved it:

I added a second hard drive and a controller card to my system. I accidentally attached my second hard drive to the first slot of my controller card. My first hard drive (with my XP installation on it) was attached to IDE1 on the motherboard. I have a dual boot system (XP and Ubuntu) and when I installed the grub bootloader onto my first hard drive, so it could 'see' my Ubuntu installation I had brought over from a previous computer, my system wouldn't boot at all after a reboot and I was forced to boot an Ubuntu LiveCD to troubleshoot. I won't bore you with all the details, but for whatever reason, my BIOS was seeing my first hard drive (with XP and the bootloader) as the second hard drive and my second hard drive as the first. So I unplugged my first hard drive from the IDE1 of my motherboard, plugged it into the first slot of my controller card, moved the second hard drive to the second slot, tweaked my BIOS and I was good to go. 

Then the CPU spiking started. I noticed because my audio kept studdering and had tons of jitter, so I thought at first that I was having issues with my sound card. Again, I won't bore you with all the details, but I made the audio problem, and more importantly, the CPU spiking disappear by simply plugging my first hard drive back into IDE1 of my mobo, and keeping my second hard drive on the second slot of my controller card, instead of in the first slot, which I had mistakenly done when I first added it.

Bottom Line:

In my case at least, the CPU spiking was caused by the PCI bus being overwhelmed with too many devices sending too many hardware interrupts to the kernel. (I should mention that in spite of this supposedly flawed configuration, I had absolutely no CPU spiking or audio problems under Ubuntu....only XP...I'll let you draw your own conclusions!)

So if you have this problem, you should probably be looking into how much stuff you have plugged into your PCI slots and troubleshoot from that perspective.

Hope this saves someone from some hair pulling frustration! :wave:


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