Historical CPU Usage - NOT perfmon!

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criccio

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I'm trying to figure out what processes are using CPU once my screen goes off due to inactivity (10 minutes).

I've done some googling and everything is telling me to run perfmon, but while that will log historical CPU usage, it won't tell me the actual processes that are using that CPU.

The problem is i'll come back to my PC after it's been inactive for any length of time, and since I run Task Manager permanently on my screen, i'll notice ~25-30% CPU usage that stops the second I touched the mouse. Now, I can see the historical usage graph for 30 seconds or a minute, but not the actual procces/s that were running during that time. So frustrating!

How does one go about finding out what's going on? :confused:

FWIW, this bugged me for a while in Windows 7, 8, and now 10.
 
it's probably SearchIndexer.. that app work under idle status organizing and gathering frequently used/searched programs together with superfetch and prefetch to make common apps to open faster.
 
Probably, but it's one of those things that's just bugging me because I can't figure out how to tell for sure!
 
You *can* use PerfMon to drill down into the processes. Just use the Process counters, along with the CPU and RAM ones. Heck, toss in some of the disk I/O ones while you're at it.
 
Eulogy said:
You *can* use PerfMon to drill down into the processes. Just use the Process counters, along with the CPU and RAM ones. Heck, toss in some of the disk I/O ones while you're at it.
Click to expand...

That would be great! Not exactly sure how though.

Under "Process" I added User Time, Processor Time and Privileged time. It ran all night and i'm not sure how to read the resulting graph. It still seems to just be a graph showing usage over time. Not individual processes that were using that CPU time so I can track down the culprit.

ac0f022403.png

ae3eef699c.png


Any ideas?
 
Looks like you selected "_Total" for the Instance to collect against. You'll want to select <All Instances> instead. Once you do that, the list area in the bottom will have a ton of rows in it, one for each process running. Then you can sift through that and find the culprit(s):
perfmon.jpg
 
Ugh, this annoys me too and usually happens after a Windows Update.

I thought maybe it was re-compiling some programs or something.
 
Windows runs lots of tasks when the system is idle, specifically not to interrupt the user. Antivirus, Search, Defragment, etc. etc. It shouldn't bug you, really, it's normal. jwcalla, windows does compile .net stuff after a windows update sometimes.
 
Araxie said:
it's probably SearchIndexer.. that app work under idle status organizing and gathering frequently used/searched programs together with superfetch and prefetch to make common apps to open faster.
Click to expand...

If you are using an SSD, you should have both Superfetch and Prefetch disabled, along with disk defragmentation, or so I read a billizon places..
 
you are correct about a defragmentation which can insta kill a SSD. but Prefetch and superfetch isn't necessary with modern SSD. it was recommended once to disable those features due to the extra "writings" that can degrade some oldie SSDs but I think that doesn't happen anymore. disable Fast boot, Prefetch and superfetch Its like a cold boot forever..:(
 
I really don't think you have to worry about manually disabling those things these days anyway. Between the OS detecting your SSD and the software you install (Magician with my Samsung), that's all taken care of.
 
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