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- Stewart
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So I bought a new desktop PC from PC Specialist last week. It has an annoying issue that I can't troubleshoot. I'd be grateful for any advice with regard to diagnosing and/or fixing it.
The symptom is that, immediately after switching from one user to another, CPU usage goes to 100% and stays there. In addition the amount of memory in use starts to climb steadily, from say 2-3GB up to the full 8GB within a couple of minutes. I can't find any way of righting things other than by doing a hard reset (holding power switch in for 5 seconds etc).
I've used Windows Task Manager to look at what's going on. It says that the process hogging the CPU is "System" but it doesn't show which process is hogging all the RAM. I've downloaded and installed Sysinternals Process Explorer to see whether that would give me any more detailed insight, but unfortunately it just gives the same answers: the CPU usage is by the "System" process and the memory usage is unexplained.
It doesn't happen every time I switch from one user to another. But I haven't yet noticed a pattern. It can happen with no application software running. For example: boot PC > log on as user 1 > start Task Manager > switch to user 2 > start Task Manager > switch to user 1 > CPU=100%. I've tried booting Windows in Safe mode and I don't seem to get the error then - but the problem doesn't happen every time I switch users so that's not really conclusive.
The PC spec is:
* Asus H87M-E motherboard
* Intel Core i5-4570 (3.2GHz) processor
* 8GB RAM
* Nvidia GeForce 210 1GB graphics card
* Kingston 120GB SSD
* WD 1TB HDD transplanted from my old PC
* Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
I've created two users, one for me and one for my wife. I haven't installed much software at all yet - Chrome browser, Office 2010, Lightroom 5.4, drivers and software for our Epson WF-3520 all-in-one printer, and I think that's all.
Any ideas / suggestions?
The symptom is that, immediately after switching from one user to another, CPU usage goes to 100% and stays there. In addition the amount of memory in use starts to climb steadily, from say 2-3GB up to the full 8GB within a couple of minutes. I can't find any way of righting things other than by doing a hard reset (holding power switch in for 5 seconds etc).
I've used Windows Task Manager to look at what's going on. It says that the process hogging the CPU is "System" but it doesn't show which process is hogging all the RAM. I've downloaded and installed Sysinternals Process Explorer to see whether that would give me any more detailed insight, but unfortunately it just gives the same answers: the CPU usage is by the "System" process and the memory usage is unexplained.
It doesn't happen every time I switch from one user to another. But I haven't yet noticed a pattern. It can happen with no application software running. For example: boot PC > log on as user 1 > start Task Manager > switch to user 2 > start Task Manager > switch to user 1 > CPU=100%. I've tried booting Windows in Safe mode and I don't seem to get the error then - but the problem doesn't happen every time I switch users so that's not really conclusive.
The PC spec is:
* Asus H87M-E motherboard
* Intel Core i5-4570 (3.2GHz) processor
* 8GB RAM
* Nvidia GeForce 210 1GB graphics card
* Kingston 120GB SSD
* WD 1TB HDD transplanted from my old PC
* Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
I've created two users, one for me and one for my wife. I haven't installed much software at all yet - Chrome browser, Office 2010, Lightroom 5.4, drivers and software for our Epson WF-3520 all-in-one printer, and I think that's all.
Any ideas / suggestions?