System CPU usage at +80% for no reason

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Level 1

8 points

System CPU usage at +80% for no reason

Over the past couple days, the CPU has suddenly been pushed to %100 for indefinite periods of time. Activity Monitor tells me this problem is coming from the System, but at any given time, the process using the highest percentage of my CPU is somewhere around 5%. I'm still able to open programs, and even use a considerable amount of my processing power. The problem is that System maxes out my processors, regardless of what I'm doing on the computer.

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.1), 2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2 GB RAM

Posted on Nov 17, 2007 3:55 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 17, 2007 4:09 PM in response to dtingle

Parental controls has been known to do this.

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Answer 2

dtingle Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 17, 2007 4:19 PM in response to jordanapple

Not parental controls. I just checked and they're turned off.

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Answer 3

Nov 17, 2007 5:49 PM in response to dtingle

When you view Activity Monitor what are the process names that are consuming your CPU intensively ? Post back.

Does a Restart solve the problem either for a while or not ?

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Answer 4

dtingle Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 17, 2007 6:27 PM in response to BarryXSharp

That's the problem, Activity Monitor says nothing is consuming my CPU (I am looking in all processes.) At any given time, the process consuming most of my CPU is at about 5%.
Restarting will solve the problem for a little bit of time, but after 15 min. or so, it starts up again.

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Answer 5

Nov 17, 2007 6:37 PM in response to dtingle

That is not possible if you're saying your computer is using 100% cpu. Activity Monitor displaying active processes will show you who's using the CPU.

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Answer 6

joeuu

Level 5

5,089 points

Nov 17, 2007 6:45 PM in response to dtingle

Open a Terminal window and type top.

Type q to quit.

Does it show anything different?

Joe

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Answer 7

dtingle Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 17, 2007 8:09 PM in response to joeuu

No. It still doesn't identify any processes that are eating up the processors. But, one thing that may be of import is that it says "Processes: 56 total, 2 running, 1 stuck, ..."
Maybe this 'stuck' process is the culprit...

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Answer 8

Nov 17, 2007 11:13 PM in response to dtingle

Try
+top -eau+

that will list all active process with the one consuming the most CPU cycles sitting on top.

I've seen mDNS consume 100% cpu on occasion but it will finish and settle down to 0% after a while.

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Answer 9

dtingle Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 17, 2007 11:25 PM in response to Paul Laskin

No luck. System is using 88% of my CPU, but the most exhaustive program is using 2.8%.

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Answer 10

Nov 18, 2007 10:57 AM in response to dtingle

I just came across this discussion because I have similar problems on my PowerBook after upgrading to 10.5.1. It worked like a charm under 10.5. Now top shows me up to 5 stuck processes about every minute. During that time, the computer is 100% unresponsive. The interesting thing is that top shows me that my CPU usage is below 10% whenever that happens.

Just a note on the side: While typing this short reply, Safari got stuck 3 times, showing me the colorful beach ball.

Something is utterly broken in 10.5.1. It made my machine completely unusable.

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Answer 11

Nov 18, 2007 3:48 PM in response to NorbertZeh

my problem is the same on iMac... the processes that are constantly running and taking up huge amounts of processor time are syslogd and Dashboard Client... any help would be appreciated...

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Answer 12

Nov 27, 2007 5:39 PM in response to dtingle

I have the same issue with my MacBook Pro - while activity monitor just shows the system using up all the CPU, if I check TOP it shows:

PID COMMAND %CPU TIME FAULTS PAGEINS COW_FAULTS MSGS_SENT MSGS_RCVD BSDSYSCALL MACHSYSCAL
13 syslogd 80.6% 1:45.33 10278 0 0 47066 258 11404952 412950
17 mDNSRespon 50.6% 1:06.13 0 0 0 335513 56 5846471 335516

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