System freeze, 100% CPU usage

Occasionally the CPU usage while running Windows goes up to 100% and the fan starts spinning like crazy. The system is then hardly responsive and becomes unusable.
I then have to boot into OSX before booting back into Windows to recover.
With Boot Camp 1.4 I had this problem maybe once a week, but since installing the Boot Camp 2.0 windows drivers this happens several times a day.
Is there maybe a work around for this problem? Is Apple working on a solution?
Cheers,
Erik

Macbook 13,3" 1,8Ghz, Windows XP Pro

Posted on Nov 19, 2007 11:19 PM

Reply
12 replies

Nov 20, 2007 11:13 PM in response to eriksmith200

Hi Erik,

can you please provide some more informations:

What applications are running when this happens?
Are these always the same or does it also happens with other apps ?
Can you go into the Task-Manager of Windows (Ctrl-Alt-Del key combo or Ctrl-Shift-Escape key combo) to see if there is a specific process that is the cause of this ?
How much RAM do you have ?
How much free space do you have on your Windows partition ?

Stefan

Nov 21, 2007 1:22 AM in response to Fortuny

I have had this problem on and off since the start, there were a few threads on this issue a while ago, you say you have installed the version 2.0 drivers, is this the leopard drivers?
when you get the 100% CPU try popping the battery out, this always stops the problem for me the CPU usage drops right off and the fan slows down again, when I put hte battery back in it starts again, I haven't found a trigger for it yet but it is quite rare at the moment.
the only way I have found to clear the fault is to rebot to OSX then back to XP, this always clears it.

Nov 21, 2007 7:02 AM in response to Fortuny

Hi Stefan,
The running applications seem to make no difference, when I had just installed windows and the boot camp drivers (the Leopard ones) I already had the problem (and quite a few other people have the same problem as well).
The process causing the most CPU usage is 'System', so that's not very informative.
I have 2GB of RAM and about 15GB free on my Windows partition.

Nov 21, 2007 5:28 PM in response to eriksmith200

The part of system that is using all the CPU time is the battery driver, all the drivers come under system, it obviously has a major bug in it, I have deduced this over a period of about a year of this problem, I only get it once every couple of months now, it seems as though the Leopard drivers are worse than before, I will resist the temptation to upgrade to Leopard, it seems like many people are having trouble with leopard, particularly concerning battery life, A coleague of mine has installed leopard on a DAW machine and had a lot of problems on first install. after install he wasn't impressed by the new OS, tiger and boot camp 1.4 is working well for me, I think I will leave it there until someone has something positive to say about Leopard.
maybe you can roll back the drivers to bootcamp 1.4, only thing I miss is the trackpad tap, which apparently still doesn't work in leopard drivers, well done apple, seems like £80 of wasted money if you upgraded.

Nov 30, 2007 2:47 PM in response to eriksmith200

FWIW, I'm seeing the same thing, and also deduced the "boot into OS X, then back into Windows" fix. Leading up to that, I ran all sorts of anti-spy/virus apps and even figured out that I can use Process Explorer to set the Priority of the System to 4 (Idle) to make other apps more usable.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processexplorer.mspx

I'll try popping the battery out next time it happens. FWIW, I also had to once reset the power system as my battery wouldn't charge. Maybe related? Maybe I should do that again…

Feb 18, 2008 6:25 AM in response to eriksmith200

I've had exactly the same problem, for quite some time now. I bought my MacBook Pro in February of 2007, and have had the 100% CPU/fan noise happen periodically ever since. I am currently running Windows XP with the Boot Camp 1.4 drivers. The only workarounds that seem to work are: 1) booting into OSX and then boot back into Windows, or 2) disabling "Microsoft acpi-compliant control method battery" in the Device Manager.

Has there been any official solution to this? I've looked everywhere to no avail.

Thanks.

Mar 16, 2008 10:37 AM in response to sripps

only thing that worked for me:

control panel => system => hardware tab => device manager => expand 'Batteries', right click on 'Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery' and select 'disable'.

Now you won't be able to see your battery status in windows, but you can still check your battery level on the bottom of your macbook, and your system will no longer freeze...

Would be nice if apple would fix something as fundamental as this...

Mar 29, 2008 12:57 PM in response to eriksmith200

This has totally sorted my problem. I feel like a right mamary gland for not finding this topic before. I've been re-formatting the bootcamp partition and reinstalling windows every time (about 5!!).

In my experience, the processor issue seems to kick in after about 3 weeks of usage in windows (just when you're thinking it's not going to happen again).. And, although I never checked it properly, going back to OSX and back to windows didn't seem to sort it.

The disabling the battery trick does though...

You and all who sail in you, are saints!

Thanks.

D

May 18, 2008 7:42 PM in response to sripps

Hello

I know that is really not the same topic, but I have a problem that might be related with this one. When I put my computer in Hibernate mode (I am using Boot camp) it won't come back unless I am plugging it in. If is running on batteries it does stay power off regardless of how much I press the power button.

Any ideas on what I should do?

Thanks a lot!

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System freeze, 100% CPU usage

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