SystemUIserver using 90+% of CPU

Question

Level 1

10 points

SystemUIserver using 90+% of CPU

I was browsing the web, minding my own business... when I noticed the fans were running high.
Thinking it was Flash, I closed Firefox. But the fans were still running at max.

Popped open Activity Monitor - and SystemUIServer was running 80-95% of my CPU, and Dock was using a fair bit too.

Reboot did nothing. Ran a set of clean-up tools through Cocktail, as well as repairing of permissions. Nothing still.

Can't explain what's going on. I haven't changed anything, not doing anything... and SystemUIServer is hogging the CPU.

MacBook Pro 15" (2,2), Mac OS X (10.6.1), 2.33GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD ~~ iPhone 3G 16GB ~~ 5th-gen iPod 30GB

Posted on Oct 31, 2009 8:31 PM

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Answer 1

B Summers Author

Level 1

10 points

Oct 31, 2009 8:35 PM in response to B Summers

... and the moment I hit "Post Message", SystemUIServer starts behaving. After a good solid half-hour of frustration... the problem seems to have resolved itself.

I swear, it's like this Macbook Pro was toying with me! XD

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Answer 2

K T

Level 7

23,883 points

Oct 31, 2009 8:38 PM in response to B Summers

Search is your friend... 🙂

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Answer 3

Bighouse

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:01 PM in response to K T

I'm also having this same problem and just when I started to type a reply it magically went away! So weird.. don't understand what did this.. i did just install the performance update.. maybe it was running something in the background?

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Answer 4

kokho

Level 1

5 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:31 PM in response to B Summers

I had this problem too, just noticed it tonight.
In fact, it seemed to happen suspiciously close to the Daylight Savings time switchover.
So I turned off the "Show date and time in menu bar" and voila, no more SystemUIserver CPU craziness.
However, I can now no longer have the time/date showing in the menubar, because once I put it back, SystemUIserver goes to 90% again, even after multiple restarts.

I sincerely hope this is not a Daylight savings time bug 😟

Edit: I also notice that just being on the first tab (Date & Time) of the Date & Time pref.pane causes CPU to be 95%+ as well. I think signs point to some system clock issue.

Message was edited by: kokho

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Answer 5

B Summers Author

Level 1

10 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:30 PM in response to kokho

Looking back, this bug happened to me around midnight in my time zone...

Looks like this IS a bug related to daylight savings! Crazy.

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Answer 6

Br0wNb0y

Level 1

10 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:33 PM in response to B Summers

Yup I'm having the same problems. I disabled the time and date from showing up on the menubar and problem solved.

Has to be a time bug.

Today ***** because it took me an entire day to upgrade to Snow Leopard because of the "Dirty disc" issue that so many people were having and now I'm greeted with this minor bug 😟

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Answer 7

Oct 31, 2009 11:34 PM in response to B Summers

Aye. I've got the same problem. I can confirm that removing date and time from the menu bar drops everything back down to normal.

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Answer 8

Oct 31, 2009 11:34 PM in response to B Summers

Seeing the same behavior here until I removed "Show date and time in menubar option". Looks like it has to be a DST issue.

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Answer 9

Oct 31, 2009 11:36 PM in response to Br0wNb0y

I did the same thing i guess its DLS, but its a pain not having the time show up. They should really fix this its like Y2K or something.

Message was edited by: silvervelocity

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Answer 10

Oct 31, 2009 11:35 PM in response to B Summers

This was worse for me... FULL CPU USAGE! Both cores are in full use!

launchd average 80%
syslogd average 30%
and SystemUIServer average 60%

Initially, when the East Coast went from DST back to EST, the SystemUIServer went to 100% CPU Usage for not even a minute.

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Answer 11

B Summers Author

Level 1

10 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:35 PM in response to Br0wNb0y

On the plus side, it seems the bug resolves itself after a period of time - as annoying as it may be.

Guess I was just one of the first to notice because my time zone's the first to hit midnight in North America (yay, Newfoundland Time).

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Answer 12

chip911

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:36 PM in response to smthopr8tr

same issue here...

removed the date and time...problem gone...

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Answer 13

Oct 31, 2009 11:36 PM in response to B Summers

haha...are you kidding me, i am having the same problem. how did you figure out that turning off the show date time would fix this problem. i did the same thing, and it worked. Hopefully tomorrow i'll be able to turn it back on. i just can't believe that my mbp is getting so excited about daylight saving time.

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Answer 14

Oct 31, 2009 11:37 PM in response to B Summers

o wow now that you guys mention it... my cpu usage has spiked to 100% ever since the dst change. The systemUIserver process is going crazy.

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Answer 15

MrDibbs

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:38 PM in response to B Summers

I'm having the same problem. Started right after the time changed for the DST. I took the time out of the menu bar... and now everything is ok.

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