Solve : High CPU and Memory usuage?

1.	Solve : High CPU and Memory usuage?
Answer» I read the "read this first" post to see where the BEST place to post would be. I hope I'm in the right place. I have a 1640 XPS laptop with 4 gigs of ram. It's got a Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8700 2.53GHz 2.53GHz Processor. Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. OK there's my set up. My QUESTION is this: As soon as I open up a browser window or windows media player or just about any program my CPU usage and my memory usage go through the roof. I know there are quite a few "services" running in the background. I have my msconfig programs down to a minimum but I don't know enough to mess with the services that are running. This may not even be my problem. I'm assuming and that's why I came to all of you. I am running CA Security Suite 100% of the time. (This program has been very good to me over the years keeping my PC CLEAN) If anyone could help or if you need more info I would really appreciate you replying. Thank All................Andrew1) Do not use msconfig to manage startup programs / processes 2) Open Task Manager to the Processes tab. Double-click on "cpu" at the top of the cpu column to sort the column with highest usage at the top. Is a specific process hogging the cpu?Thank you for your time and response. I did what you instructed. When I double-click the CPU (the column is full of 00s) the only column I can see that shows number data is the Memory (Private working set) column. There are roughly 30 programs running. It looks like the big users are Microsoft Office Outlook, Firefox, Desktop Windows Manager, Windows Explorer, Dell Dock, Common Event Manager. These are names in the description columns. If you need the image name I can provide those. Again Thank you for your time. My laptop works pretty well it's just that being a newer laptop I would expect it not to "top" out on memory and CPU usage so fast. I must have a lot of things running in the background I do not need. Do not worry about memory usage. The only concern you should have is if something is hogging the cpu. You should not see ALL zeros - the task manager itself is using cycles. Either click on "cpu" again to resort or scroll to the bottom to see if something is using the cpu heavily. If not, don't worry about things you don't need to worry about. If the system is running smoothly you may assume Windows is managing memory just fine.Under CPU all the way down are 00's. The Task manager has 02. What do these numbers represent? And with your response I feel better about it all. Thank you. I officially have stopped trying to fix something that isn't broke. LOL.........It just shows how much of the cpu is being used and by which process(es). And yes, moving on is a good idea. Just enjoy the system and leave the inner workings to Microsoft. Quote from: Eighthnote on January 03, 2011, 10:10:32 AM Under CPU all the way down are 00's. The Task manager has 02. What do these numbers represent? The % of the total CPU time that that process is using. This includes any extra cores you have (a runaway program on a dual core machine would generally show "50%" CPU usage, since it "pegs" a single core at 100%). Also note that "System Idle Process" is not a process at all but rather a "placeholder" that task manager uses to show how much idle time there is. Additionally, a lot of people like to believe that the higher your "System Idle process" shows, the more responsive the system is. This isn't always the case, THOUGH- idle time means the CPU is doing absolutely nothing at all but waiting, so that "idle" time doesn't contribute to responsiveness one bit. When your machine isn't doing anything, everything should be 0- (which means, again, that it's essentially not doing anything) except for system idle process and maybe taskmgr (which uses a varying amount depending on the power of the processor- on mine taskmgr.exe only uses 1% when I move the window around rapidly or size it or do other things; on my older machine, taskmgr would generally use about 4 to 7 percent just by being open. if everything else is 0 or 1, then you don't have a problem. It's when a single process sits at 100% (or, to be precise, when a single process sits at 100% divided by the number of cores you have- if a process sits at 50% and you have a dual-core machine, for example) and even then, it should only be of concern when that program isn't really doing anything; for example, when I render a video with 3ds max, it consumes two of my cores and pegs it's usage at 50% (since I have four) but it is using that CPU for a good reason. It's when some random process that you know shouldn't be using the CPU sits and pegs it for a long time. Memory is generally something you shouldn't worry about; for me, Firefox is using nearly a GB of memory- however, if I had only 2GB total (rather then 8GB to distribute) then firefox would "know" not to cache it's pages so much. Although to be frank I think the entire idea behind firefox's usage of memory for caching is absolutely pointless since the OS should be responsible for such things as well as it essentially duplicating information that Vista and 7's Superfetch will be keeping track of, but I digress. Remember however that the values shown do not mean "this is how much of your physical memory this program is using"; it simply means that is how much it has allocated; memory pages that haven't been accessed or aren't used very often will be written to the pagefile (and windows will tell itself "ok, if word.exe wants that bit of memory, I'll have to remember that it's on disk") and then gives that bit of memory to some other needy application. If the original program goes to read that bit of data, a page fault occurs, the virtual memory manager quickly copies that bit of memory back from the pagefile, and then whistles and pretends it was there all along. Basically, the details of memory management are not something that can be grasped fully without reading a few books on the subject Here's a Start... Grab the Adult beverage of your choice.after reading the article in the magazine, I can see why you said grab an adult beverage; i think that I'll need more than one! cheers, BABS

Answer»

I read the "read this first" post to see where the BEST place to post would be. I hope I'm in the right place. I have a 1640 XPS laptop with 4 gigs of ram. It's got a Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8700 2.53GHz 2.53GHz Processor. Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. OK there's my set up. My QUESTION is this: As soon as I open up a browser window or windows media player or just about any program my CPU usage and my memory usage go through the roof. I know there are quite a few "services" running in the background. I have my msconfig programs down to a minimum but I don't know enough to mess with the services that are running. This may not even be my problem. I'm assuming and that's why I came to all of you. I am running CA Security Suite 100% of the time. (This program has been very good to me over the years keeping my PC CLEAN) If anyone could help or if you need more info I would really appreciate you replying. Thank All................Andrew1) Do not use msconfig to manage startup programs / processes
2) Open Task Manager to the Processes tab. Double-click on "cpu" at the top of the cpu column to sort the column with highest usage at the top. Is a specific process hogging the cpu?Thank you for your time and response. I did what you instructed. When I double-click the CPU (the column is full of 00s) the only column I can see that shows number data is the Memory (Private working set) column. There are roughly 30 programs running. It looks like the big users are Microsoft Office Outlook, Firefox, Desktop Windows Manager, Windows Explorer, Dell Dock, Common Event Manager. These are names in the description columns. If you need the image name I can provide those. Again Thank you for your time. My laptop works pretty well it's just that being a newer laptop I would expect it not to "top" out on memory and CPU usage so fast. I must have a lot of things running in the background I do not need. Do not worry about memory usage. The only concern you should have is if something is hogging the cpu. You should not see ALL zeros - the task manager itself is using cycles. Either click on "cpu" again to resort or scroll to the bottom to see if something is using the cpu heavily. If not, don't worry about things you don't need to worry about. If the system is running smoothly you may assume Windows is managing memory just fine.Under CPU all the way down are 00's. The Task manager has 02. What do these numbers represent? And with your response I feel better about it all. Thank you. I officially have stopped trying to fix something that isn't broke. LOL.........It just shows how much of the cpu is being used and by which process(es). And yes, moving on is a good idea. Just enjoy the system and leave the inner workings to Microsoft. Quote from: Eighthnote on January 03, 2011, 10:10:32 AM

Under CPU all the way down are 00's. The Task manager has 02. What do these numbers represent?

The % of the total CPU time that that process is using. This includes any extra cores you have (a runaway program on a dual core machine would generally show "50%" CPU usage, since it "pegs" a single core at 100%).

Also note that "System Idle Process" is not a process at all but rather a "placeholder" that task manager uses to show how much idle time there is.

Additionally, a lot of people like to believe that the higher your "System Idle process" shows, the more responsive the system is. This isn't always the case, THOUGH- idle time means the CPU is doing absolutely nothing at all but waiting, so that "idle" time doesn't contribute to responsiveness one bit.

When your machine isn't doing anything, everything should be 0- (which means, again, that it's essentially not doing anything) except for system idle process and maybe taskmgr (which uses a varying amount depending on the power of the processor- on mine taskmgr.exe only uses 1% when I move the window around rapidly or size it or do other things; on my older machine, taskmgr would generally use about 4 to 7 percent just by being open.

if everything else is 0 or 1, then you don't have a problem. It's when a single process sits at 100% (or, to be precise, when a single process sits at 100% divided by the number of cores you have- if a process sits at 50% and you have a dual-core machine, for example) and even then, it should only be of concern when that program isn't really doing anything; for example, when I render a video with 3ds max, it consumes two of my cores and pegs it's usage at 50% (since I have four) but it is using that CPU for a good reason. It's when some random process that you know shouldn't be using the CPU sits and pegs it for a long time.

Memory is generally something you shouldn't worry about; for me, Firefox is using nearly a GB of memory- however, if I had only 2GB total (rather then 8GB to distribute) then firefox would "know" not to cache it's pages so much. Although to be frank I think the entire idea behind firefox's usage of memory for caching is absolutely pointless since the OS should be responsible for such things as well as it essentially duplicating information that Vista and 7's Superfetch will be keeping track of, but I digress.

Remember however that the values shown do not mean "this is how much of your physical memory this program is using"; it simply means that is how much it has allocated; memory pages that haven't been accessed or aren't used very often will be written to the pagefile (and windows will tell itself "ok, if word.exe wants that bit of memory, I'll have to remember that it's on disk") and then gives that bit of memory to some other needy application. If the original program goes to read that bit of data, a page fault occurs, the virtual memory manager quickly copies that bit of memory back from the pagefile, and then whistles and pretends it was there all along.

Basically, the details of memory management are not something that can be grasped fully without reading a few books on the subject

Here's a Start...

Grab the Adult beverage of your choice.after reading the article in the magazine, I can see why you said grab an adult beverage; i think that I'll need more than one!
cheers,
BABS

Solve : High CPU and Memory usuage?

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