You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

B Summers Author

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

106 replies

Oct 31, 2009 11:44 PM in response to Farlander

"Snow Leopard is by far the worst version of Mac OS X."

Seriously. I regret ever upgrading.

Oct 31, 2009 11:44 PM in response to B Summers

Definately has to be a time-change problem. I had this issue tonite just while browsing web. SystemUIServer jumped to 90%+ cpu and I wondered what was going on. I rebooted and that didn't work. After reboot launchd, syslogd and SystemUIServer combined were consuming 100%. After finding this thread, I messed with the computer date (changed to Nov. 2) and turned off the automatic time update and cpu dropped to >5%.

B Summers Author

Level 1

10 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:45 PM in response to LukeW

Even if Apple were to get a patch out within the next few hours, the Daylight Savings bug will have passed... anyone who was AFK between midnight and 1am will likely never even notice the bug.

Hopefully this doesn't crop up again next spring with DST rolls around again...

Oct 31, 2009 11:45 PM in response to kokho

I had the same ******** problem. Fixed by taking the clock off like you did, or manually changing the date/time worked as well.

LukeW

Level 1

11 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:46 PM in response to Farlander

Its a weird issue, but I have to strongly disagree with you on Snow Leopard being bad. Some people will always have issues, that will never change. All our machines run quite well on SL, and we have not had any issues at all, and we have over 34 MacBooks and Mac Pros running.

Bummer that you seem to have issues, but that's a minority.

markomac

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:47 PM in response to B Summers

yep, same issue !, disabled time and date in menu bar utilization immediately dropped to normal.

Ikester

Level 1

36 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:48 PM in response to B Summers

Must be Daylight Savings bug. Just hide the menu bar clock to "fix" it temporarily.

Oct 31, 2009 11:49 PM in response to LukeW

"Bummer that you seem to have issues, but that's a minority."

We're all here in a thread talking about our computers freaking out because THE TIME CHANGED. If it was Windows doing this, Macintosh fans would chalk it up to MS's incompetence once again. And anyone who's seen the list of bug fixes for 10.6.2, combined with the fact that a lot of major hardware at work no longer works with my computer ... no, this is Apple's Vista.

I wonder if Apple will even acknowledge this happened.

Oct 31, 2009 11:51 PM in response to Deuz Augustine

Same issue on White Macbook avec Firewire

Oct 31, 2009 11:52 PM in response to Mistake78

I can verify on this too. I wondered why my CPU was acting insane (it started about an hour ago). I searched all over the net for SystemUIserver high CPU usage info, tried everything I could find, found this thread (Google acts fast), disabled showing the time in my menubar, and now everything is fine.

How can a DST change mess something up so profoundly?

Oct 31, 2009 11:53 PM in response to lunaraura

Isn't it ironic that just as daylight savings time kicked in, power consumption of all Macs went boom?

Oct 31, 2009 11:53 PM in response to B Summers

i don't think i would say that SL it horrible just because your fan spins up for a half an hour right before DST change, i'm sure this is a small bug that will be fixed before the time changes again. all operating systems have bugs when they first come out. this problem is nothing compared to what i went through when first upgrading to vista. os x in not perfect but it's a lot closer than windows.

Oct 31, 2009 11:54 PM in response to lunarworks

good question. time change = cpu goes nuts? hmmmmm ....

Oct 31, 2009 11:54 PM in response to lunaraura

Me too. I thought it was the new Bamboo Wacom Pen Touch I installed, but as soon as I turned off the date and time, my CPU usage went back to normal. Waiting for the fix!
Ed

jakedeg

Level 1

8 points

Oct 31, 2009 11:55 PM in response to B Summers

Yup. Me too. This is unbelievable. The good news is, iStat Menus clock display still works.... I wonder how long it will take apple to fix it...

SystemUIserver using 90+% of CPU