Something uses up most of the CPU while idling

[gwynbleidd997]

Hello,
I noticed something weird happening with my laptop. When I leave it idling but the screen is turned off, after a couple minutes the fan starts ramping up and when I leave Task Manager open I get this (see screenshot below).
I have nothing running in the background except chrome. When I turn on the screen/press any button the usage drops down to near 0% where it should be and the fan spinning slows down.
Anyone knows what the hell is causing this? and is there a piece of software that logs processes and their CPU usage over time?
Thanks.

 

[blobster21]

the "process" tab, go in it, sort all running processes by % and you'll see the offender.

edit : https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/28/a-detailed-windows-resource-monitor-guide/

 

[cucker tarlson]

I have nothing running in the background except chrome.

there you go

 

[theonek]

defender is scanning on the background or windows update is running, see your disk is under load same time with the cpu...and now i saw one more thing, chrome tends to search your disks and loads the cpu and disks....

 

[Bill_Bright]

I have nothing running in the background except chrome.

Chrome is likely the problem and simple to confirm. Just kill all Chrome processes and see if CPU (and disk) utilization drop.

But it could be (or also be) as theonek suggested. Remember, by design, when you go idle, Windows, other installed apps, and many security programs starts doing housekeeping, updating and scanning chores. This is perfectly normal. However, if you come back hours later and it is running full speed, then that's a problem.

 

[Bronan]

Well i think both items are the ones messing up, chrome tends to keep very active although you do nothing with it and windows 10 is kinda a system hog since they introduced the second beta version.
Lots of updates, spyware sending to M$ and idiot activities which are not needed if you have as SSD for example.

Some people do forget to disable the disk cleanup and defrag crap ... When you have a HDD its ok if not make sure you disable that crap. Even though some companies keep telling that its ok to defrag a ssd i can promise you its absolute bull. Even though some ssd have a read/write limit beyond what we ever achieve its simply not needed at all.
Its no longer a mechanical device so it instant access the right spot so nothing is gained from any disk cleaning or defrag in fact the fast TLC gets damaged by too much write cycles.

But its also the underlying hardware platform.
I actually noticed several times that my systems booted up at night and i could not get access to my own pc and laptop.
It was constant showing high disk activity and the network card made overtime for hours, the last time i was fed up with it and killed the machine by pulling the power cord and yes that resulted in a reinstall from windows. But that fact is your system is being activated remote is something i do not like.
If you have time check the activity at night from any device you have at night and see how much its blinking, if its constant sending and receiving data you know that its pretty darn active.
I have warned many years ago that this would happen and in recent years more and more people told me that i was right all those years.
Its the latest replacement of the "palladium platform" which involves all hard and software vendors and the governements services who make use of this build in hardware.
There is not much we can do about it, because i think every hardware company is involved in this.
I even tried to keep 2 laptops to stay asleep as long as i wanted, but even without a cable connected or a active wifi connection made by myself it kept starting up and was sending and/or receiving data, logs are empty while their is a insane amount of activity but your not gonna find it in the system logs nor will you be able to stop it, the only solution which worked was remove the battery i actually pushed the power button ot make sure every residu of power was gone and then its finally no longer active for you desktop its a bit easier make sure to set a kill switch before the power supply and turn power off.
Because if your not disconnect the powersupply off its power its gonna can become active at will, only if it really has a power switch that makes sure to kill the usage of the machine without your allowing it.
I leave it to other to find out why in the world its constant sending / receiving data and it active at moments it should not, i know alot of people think it might be paranoia. But i asure you if you have a noisy game pc which boots up at night and start doing things at night you seriously ask yourself if your machine got hacked while EVERY virus/trojan scanner on the planet does not find anything wrong with the machines nor can you find anything in the system logs from what it is doing should be enough to ask yourself WTF is this thing doing.
So remains to be detected what is being done by the super large firms from current software and hardware vendors at your system.

 

[Rahnak]

@Bronan that's some serious conspiracy tangent you're on about. If your computers are turning on at night it's not an OS problem.

@gwynbleidd997 You probably have something other than Chrome using CPU on idle. Or you may have some malicious/miner extension installed.

 

[Bill_Bright]

and windows 10 is kinda a system hog since they introduced the second beta version.

Ummm, not really (discounting the point I don't know what you mean by "second beta" ???). W10 is actually very efficient when it comes to efficient use of resources.

And of course, if anyone is really following what W10 does, it certainly is NOT spying on us and it is very easy to control what telemetry is being collected.

If you are paranoid about spying, stop using Facebook, Chrome and Google. In fact, terminate your ISP service and throw away your cell phone. Those are who you need to worry about, not Microsoft.

Some people do forget to disable the disk cleanup and defrag crap ...

Now this is just silly and sadly, indicates a serious lack of understanding of Windows and operating systems in general.
Disable Disk Cleanup? Huh? That makes no sense. It's not running. Its a manual process. And FTR, Microsoft is deprecating the tool anyway, in favor of "Storage sense". But regardless, there is not need to disable Disk Cleanup. It does not use any resources, unless you manually run it and then it actually frees up resources.
And of course, with just an inkling of homework, EVERYBODY KNOWS since W7, defrag is automatically disabled on SSDs anyway.

Even though some companies keep telling that its ok to defrag a ssd

Oh? Got a link?

And yes, Windows will often reboot at night when we are asleep. That's when it is supposed to! That way it can apply updates that require reboots without disrupting the user. Again, with just a bit of homework, you would know this.

Because if your not disconnect the powersupply off its power its gonna can become active at will

@Bronan that's some serious conspiracy tangent you're on about. If your computers are turning on at night it's not an OS problem.

I agree. I think it time to invest in Tin futures again.

 

[gwynbleidd997]

the "process" tab, go in it, sort all running processes by % and you'll see the offender.

edit : https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/28/a-detailed-windows-resource-monitor-guide/

"System" was the culprit it seems. I right clicked and opened the file location and it's "ntoskrnl.exe" under System32.
I did some googling and it looks like this is windows maintenance. If I was plugged in then sure I guess I'll let it do its thing but I was on battery when it started eating up my CPU, I think that's dumb tbh sucking up battery life for unnecessary tasks that can be done later.

Well i think both items are the ones messing up, chrome tends to keep very active although you do nothing with it and windows 10 is kinda a system hog since they introduced the second beta version.
Lots of updates, spyware sending to M$ and idiot activities which are not needed if you have as SSD for example.

Big conspiracy theory my man. Even then, why would they make it so obvious if they wanted to spy on us? why alert the user with so much CPU usage when you can hide it in many different ways.

Alas I got my answer I think, thanks to everyone for replying.