Java process causing 100%+ cpu load! Grrr!!!
I was wondering if anyone can help me troubleshoot my problem. The problem I'm having is my MacBook Pro will begin to run slower and I'll notice the fan(s) will be running on full blast even when not being used and should be at idle. When I pull up the Activity Monitor, I notice the "java" process is soaking up 100% or more of the CPU. The CPU usage moves around, but on average hovers between 97% and 100% using one or both of the processors. I checked the hard drive and it's ok...minimal disk activity. What I'm really looking for is if anyone knows how I can find out what program is causing java to run that high so that I can either make changes to the program or uninstall it altogether.
First off, the hardware I have: a MacBook Pro 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8GB RAM running Lion OS X v10.7.1 and current with OS X updates. Hard drive space is not a problem with 200GB free space on a 7200RPM SATA 500GB HD.
More details of the issue: I have done a lot within my technical knowledge to try to troubleshoot the issue, but have come up with nothing. It's very frustrating. I won't list every single thing I've done because my post will be longer than it already is so I'm omitting a lot. I first started to notice this problem a few weeks ago and I was running OS X Snow Leopard v10.6 and current on updates. I tried many things to troubleshoot before deciding that it was a good time to format the hard drive and do a fresh install. I also decided to upgrade to OS X Lion. Installed, no problem, and installed updates. Installed needed apps including latest version of java. The same java process eating up the CPU started happening within a day of installing Lion. I first started with the simple task of ending that process. That didn't help because it would start right back up within seconds to minutes. I began uninstalling programs (even the needed programs), one by one, to see if one of them was the culprit. Still the same problem. So I'm running a bare bones, or close to bare bones OS, with this problem occurring.
So here's one of the things I did to dig a little deeper. In terminal, I ran the command "ps -axwwwp "(process id)". The problem java process id varies as it changes each time the process starts back up. In the results displayed, I'll scroll to that java process id and the 'cmd' running or attempting to run is "java -Djava.awt.headless=true -jar /tmp/ics29586". The time that this process is running will vary and I'm not sure when it attempts to restart itself, but currently it's been running for 30:38.80. I'm assuming that's 30 min. In Activity Monitor, I drilled down through all the parent processes of the java process and I'm not able to find out what program is starting this process. Here's the drill down of the parent processes: java (PID varies) --> cron (PID varies) --> cron (21) --> launchd (1) --> kernel task (0). But this doesn't tell me much. I ran a sample of the process but I don't understand it. I've removed all login items and turned off Time Machine backups. So I was thinking that maybe the process was hanging up on a scheduled task since one of the parent processes was the cron. I tried deleting the "ics29586" file out of the /tmp directory after ending the problem java process. That didn't work. It just recreated itself. I checked support on the java website and came up empty-handed. I've googled this issue in all sorts of ways and can't find anything. Nothing changed that I can remember when this issue first started happening...no new programs or updates. Does anyone know how to troubleshoot this further? What is that "ics29586" file and what is java getting hung up on?
Please help! This is slowing me down and I've never had this problem before. Sorry for the long post, but wanted to include as much detail as possible.
Thank you in advance!
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1), 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM, 500GB