How to get the cause of high CPU usage caused by apps?

[MagicAndre1981]

you miss the impact of the UAC. When you type cmd.exe in the startmenu search, make a rightclick and select "Run as adminitrator". read the link I posted

[d_oldham]

I am currently running Windows 8.1 (64 bit standard edition) on a mid 2014 MacBook Pro with retina display. This was installed via boot camp.

 

Unfortunately with a clean install the CPU is idling at around 30%, meaning that the laptop is getting hot and the fans are running quite loud without using it. Task manager shows that this is a result of "system" and "system interrupts" using around 20% and 10% respectively.

 

I have managed to get a latency.etl file but I am unable to interpret the results. I think the interface of windows performance toolkit may have changed slightly since 2009. I can only see that "system" is using a lot of my CPU power.

 

MagicAndre, I have PM'd you a link to where the file is hosted. Would it be possible to look over this and see if you can identify the problem? Please also let me know if you require further information from me. Also, if anybody else wants to have a look at it the file is hosted here:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw27JiFE8K6KcWpkOUZEdjhKWFE/edit?usp=sharing

 

Thanks in advance

[MagicAndre1981]

looks like you used the Windows 8 SDK, so the fiel is corrupted. But I can see bcmwl63a.sys calls. So update your Broadcom network drivers.

[SZ87]

Any chance of updating the instructions for WIndows Performance Analyzer v6.3? The reason I ask is because:

 

Now go to the graph "CPU sampling per CPU" and select the interval where you have the high CPU usage, make a right click and select "Load Symbols" and next click "clone selection". Make a rightclick again and select "summary table"...

 

Everything in red either cannot be found/is located somewhere else or is named differently. There is a graph called "Utilization by CPU" under "CPU Usage (Sampled)." The option "Load samples" only appears under the "Trace" menu. "Clone selection" isn't available when right-clicking the selection, nor is "summary table."

 

Am I just doing it wrong?

[MagicAndre1981]

this guide was written for the old xperfview, not the WPA.exe. Share the ETL file and I'll take a look at it.

[SZ87]

Honestly, I'd rather learn it myself. It seems that xperfview was replaced with WPA. Certainly WPA, being xperfview's successor, should have no problems following this guide? I followed the guide fine up until that point in my first post.

[MagicAndre1981]

it is the successor, but a complete new tool.

 

Copy the attached file to the same folder where the latency.etl is stored and make a double click on it (remove the .txt extension first so that is shows .wpa as extension). It opens the required graphs for normal cpu usage and DPC usage. Load the symbols and expand the stack. This looks similar to the old UI.

 

 

latency_ETL_symbols_microsoft.wpa.txt

[SZ87]

I PM'd you the file. After using the file you posted, I could see that it (probably) has something to do with WAV files.

 

 

This makes sense because I had recently force-cancelled a MOVE operation for some WAV files. It's been doing this ever since.

Edited April 1, 2015 by SZ87

[MagicAndre1981]

yeah. The important things are the 2 lines thumbcache.dll!CThumbnailProviderWrapper::GetThumbnail and shell32.dll!CPropertyThumbnailHandler::_GetThumbnailInternal. So the issues comes from generating thumbnails. Turn this off in the Explorer options and let Windows always show only the file icons

[SZ87]

Thanks. Is there any way to fix it? I've ran sfc /scannow which came back with 0 issues. chkdsk passed. I don't know what to do. Turning them off is just covering it up, really. I'd like to be able to see thumbnails again.

[MagicAndre1981]

there is no other workaround.