CPU spiking for unknown reasons

[Kortlan Porter]

Hello,

I have read a lot of posts on here about personal laptop CPU's usage spiking while gaming, watching videos, or opening programs. I have tried all of the recommendations given and still have not seen any results. Anytime I open any program, game, or anything my CPU usage spikes to ~50% or higher. I have closed all of the processes that can afford to not be running, but the that does not help. Whatever program is opened or running, no matter what it is, keeps spiking the CPU. An example is if I run a game, such as League of Legends, it will start out fine with ~40 fps but slowly drop to ~7 to 10 fps. I have set all of the graphics to low and turned shadows off and it does not help. My CPU fan stopped working and I took apart my laptop and fixed it and blew it out with compressed air, but all that fixed was the heating issue. The hottest the CPU gets now is ~60c. Before my fan went out, I could run anything without a problem. I have run AVG, Malwarebyte, CCleaner, updated all the drivers but nothing seems to help.

Here are some screenshots I took:

:
This is just from opening League of Legends.


This is from opening techspot.com.


Here is a screenshot with the Resource Monitor.

Here is my system information:

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120330-1504)
System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
System Model: HP Pavilion dm4 Notebook PC
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 450 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3894MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Graphics Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics
Chip type: Intel(R) HD Graphics (Core i5)
Current Mode: 1366 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Driver File Version: 8.15.0010.2622 (English)
Driver Version: 8.15.10.2622
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1

I cannot figure it out, and its driving me mad. Thanks in advance for any and all help.

 

[Marnomancer]

First, is your C1E feature activated? Disabling it on my friend's PC fixed a similar issue.
Secondly, can you check which process is spiking? Open the Processes tab in Task Manager and check "Show Processes from all users". See which process is spiking, and kill it if it shouldn't be there, or has an unusual name (like all caps names. example RUNDLL32.EXE). Then see if CPU usage spikes.
Let us know how it goes.

 

[Kortlan Porter]

I had tried narrowing down the process from all users before I posted on here and still could not find 1 process that was hogging the CPU. I was able to fix the lagging part with any program and the CPU spikes however. The "Power Cooling Option" while my laptop was plugged in somehow got changed from active to passive. Changing that back got ride of the lag and spikes. My laptop still runs a bit hot ~60-65c when running larger programs.

 

[HiDDeNMisT]

Did you run any virus scans?

Try running one. It could be an infection.

 

[ReviverSoft]

- Well, you should be worried about the CPU spiking to 80%. When this happens again, bring up the Task Manager, select Processes and note the program with the highest CPU utilization.

- The CPU reaching 60*C on load is quite normal for an Intel chip, esp. in a laptop.

- Maybe you should check to see if your CPU fan is running at full speed. A program like HWMonitor or SpeedFan should help here.

- Also check to see if there are any BIOS updates available for your laptop.

 

[Specter_WSA]

I got the same problem. SVChost takes a lot....Still doesnt make sense though. Virus scans says there is nothing abnormal. It just started doing this a few days ago. I lag in anything I do online, youtube, league of legends, dota. BUt it doesn't seem to lag offline. I see the cpu spiking up to 70 along with my memory. Spoolsv also pops up which is something to do with printers. No idea how to fix this ****

 

[HiDDeNMisT]

Try running a virus scan on the computer to rule that out.

 

[Specter_WSA]

It comes up absolutely clean. So I am guessing it is hardware.

 

[HiDDeNMisT]

Did you try ending the process to see what happens???

 

[Specter_WSA]

Any common sense stuff I have tried, every process that looked weird that I got rid of just came back.