CPU Usage at 100% after WIN10 upgrade (task manager), although HWMonitor says otherwise.

[yunpangalawa]

A few days back, I decided to upgrade an old Acer Veriton m6610 to Windows 10. As well as adding a used GTX 960 2gb, to maybe use it for gaming here and there.

 

Immediately after the upgrade, as well as a restart, checked Task Manager to see if everything seemed well for the i5 2400. This was when I saw the 100% CPU usage.

 

Curiously though, I wasn't experiencing slowdowns anywhere, so I decided to check how much CPU usage HWMonitor would report, and to my surprise HWMonitor was showing CPU usage on any of the cores to be 0-15%.

 

I've combed over some other forums' answers on lowering CPU usage after an upgrade to WIN 10, but none has worked so far (at least for Task manager to not show 100% all the time). Changing startup programs around, Windows Clean boot/startup, uninstalling - reinstalling drivers and applications, disabling some services (reenabled them after since they showed no difference).

 

Spec Sheet

 - All the programs were installed on the system when it was still Windows 7, and Task Manager would report CPU usage to be at 1-3% during idle then.

 - The program with the highest CPU usage isn't always the same, it changes from anything to anything (System services, Open programs, Antivirus, NVIDIA suff, anything).

 

Any recommendations on lowering the CPU usage, or ideas on why Task manager is saying it is on 100%?

[Nord]

Taskmanager got f*ed in some systems recently (3+ weeks ago) because windows 10 is great! And since can report wrong metrics.

 

Given the choice I would trust HWMonitor like 50x times more than anything windows provides in general. Though it can never hurt to verify with a 3rd or 4th program.

 

Thing is, because windows 10 is great and knows automatically what is best for you, it might just do that while you are “idling” the computer and will immediately stop once you open some program that is not word or a browser. So even if the CPU utilisation task manager reports does in fact turn out to be correct, if you have no problem in games and similar, dont worry about it, it will go away by itself, eventually, at some point.

And if not, go back to Win7 or 8.1, both are better. With the hardware you are sporting win10 will not give you any advantages in games anyway.

 

But im pretty sure you are having the task manager utilization bug, 55%+ CPU usage with just 15watt on an 2500, no way

[yunpangalawa]

9 hours ago, Nord said:

Given the choice I would trust HWMonitor like 50x times more than anything windows provides in general. Though it can never hurt to verify with a 3rd or 4th program.

I see! I've tested a couple games (Rocket League, Minecraft, and CS:GO) right after making the post yesterday and MSI Afterburner reported CPU utilization at 60-80% with Minecraft and CSGO, and Rocket League at a constant 40-60% usage at all and any cores.

 

Any suggestions on other CPU Util programs that would be as dependable as HWMonitor? Just wanna check idling operation side by side  

 

9 hours ago, Nord said:

And if not, go back to Win7 or 8.1, both are better. With the hardware you are sporting win10 will not give you any advantages in games anyway.

 

But im pretty sure you are having the task manager utilization bug, 55%+ CPU usage with just 15watt on an 2500, no way

*Whew* I was very much unaware that Task manager could be this messed up haha. Hopefully it fixes itself sooner or later, because I'd rather the support for Win10 and I prefer Win 7 than 8.1 (more like more familiar and accustomed to ). Sadly support's only until Jan next year so it's kinda off-putting to revert to Win 7. Win 8.1, still a last resort though, thanks for the suggestion!

 

 

I'll wade the utilization waters at Win 10 for now. Hopefully, Task Manager irons itself out

[Nord]

Afterburner is equally fine as HWMonitor and so is Hwinfo64. 

Intel XTU (even though that's far from the use case we are looking at here) is also very reliable in terms of CPU readouts.

 

Win7 support stops with next year, yes.
In reality this just means that there won't be any windows updates anymore apart from “critical” ones. So for the average home user this basically won't matter for another year or two, depending on how software developers choose to still include win7 or how many new vulnerabilities get detected.

Personally, I don't think that I really “needed” any of the win7 updates within the past several years anyway, so who cares really. Though if it turns out that you “just” got the broke task manager bug, there really is no reason to switch back anyway. Win10 is the future, its a grim and stupid looking one but its the one our microsoft overloards have chosen for us. At least Win10 is not as bad as  windows ME or Vista (yet).

[yunpangalawa]

18 hours ago, Nord said:

Afterburner is equally fine as HWMonitor and so is Hwinfo64. 

Intel XTU (even though that's far from the use case we are looking at here) is also very reliable in terms of CPU readouts.

 

Win7 support stops with next year, yes.
In reality this just means that there won't be any windows updates anymore apart from “critical” ones. So for the average home user this basically won't matter for another year or two, depending on how software developers choose to still include win7 or how many new vulnerabilities get detected.

Personally, I don't think that I really “needed” any of the win7 updates within the past several years anyway, so who cares really. Though if it turns out that you “just” got the broke task manager bug, there really is no reason to switch back anyway. Win10 is the future, its a grim and stupid looking one but its the one our microsoft overloards have chosen for us. At least Win10 is not as bad as  windows ME or Vista (yet).

Noted! I'll hang around Win10 if the games I check doesn't show slowdowns, or revert to Win7 if Win10 shows any other signs of messing with the system (Since it's already clear it messes with any other kind of data you have). Thanks for helping out!