Gen_Noot

I used process explorer a while back and saw that it's being caused by ACPI.sys. Can't kill that sadly. I'm just operating under the assumption at the moment that it's corrupt. As far as I'm aware the only other cause would be damage to the CPU, which considering it's soldered into the board (the same board the GPU is soldered into) would be a $1000+ repair, i.e. new computer territory, Oh shoot I completely forgot that was a thing. So regardless of OEM keys I should be fine because I initially registered my windows account on an old Windows 7 computer I upgraded to Windows 10 years ago.

Great minds think alike. I'm not sure what you mean by But seeing as the system is still occasionally (it's always been an intermittent issue for me) using 10-25% and causing the CPU to be in a constant boosted state, even when all that's open is a word doc, I'm going to consider the issue as still present. Weirdly seems to only effect the second core for the most part though.

Doesn't Windows update automatically find and install most drivers anyway leaving just a few more up-to-date drivers and software all I have to do?

Hi, thanks for the link, however MSI already got me to attempt an F3 MSI factory reset but it failed and bricked the laptop, so I had to use the backup I created using their burn recovery tool the day before. However this backup seems to be of how it was straight out of the factory anyway. Software I had installed on day one of ownership was gone and software I had uninstalled years ago, i.e Norton, were back. They didn't seem to be able to answer (or understand) this. After this whole rigmarole the issue remained sadly so I'm thinking that maybe a manual windows 10 reinstall might fair better. I'm also a moron however so might be entirely wrong?

Hi, (For background - I've developed this weird issue with my laptop where system can start hogging resources. It peak at 30% CPU usage and stay well above 10% for several hours at a time regardless of what I'm doing and causes my poor i7 6700hq to be turbo-ing almost an entire Ghz for this entire duration. I've narrowed this down to either a corrupted system file or hardware damage of some sort. Reinstalling windows is thus an effort to see if its simply the system that's corrupted.) After a discussion with the MSI tech support, they state that I will have to buy a whole new copy of specifically OEM Windows. They also stated that it must be OEM as opposed to Retail as the key wont work. However, if I have a key already, I don't really see why I have to buy windows, could I not simply download a windows installer, boot it from a USB and enter my current key? I asked this but they seemed pretty vague, perhaps understandably as they were wanting me to send my laptop to a service center and pay €99 for the privilege. A hefty bill to pay when it may not even resolve the issue. What's your guys advice on the matter? Does it actually matter if it is OEM or Retail? Will the key still work? Am I going about this all backwards?