System process spiking - Vista 64

Schnippzle · 13 Sep 2008 at 18:36

Howdy,
Recently my System process in Task Manager has started spiking to 20% making my pc unusable. Have looked into it and found the ntoskml.exe thread that is causing the trouble. Have uninstalled most stuff on my pc bar Kaspersky and it still persists

Any help would be much appreciated.

Schnippzle · 13 Sep 2008 at 19:32

Checked recent updates and uninstalled Window Search 4.0 which was installed this morning. Problem still persists though.

marc2003 · 13 Sep 2008 at 19:38

ntoskml.exe? that's a dodgy file you've got there. it's certainly not a system process.....

Schnippzle · 13 Sep 2008 at 19:50

Hmmm...I wonder what may have caused this. The reason I mentioned ntoskml is that it is stated multiple times in the thread list in Process Explorer.

marc2003 · 13 Sep 2008 at 20:40

time to get the anti-spyware/anti virus stuff out. i don't know what to recommend though, as i don't use any.

Schnippzle · 14 Sep 2008 at 00:14

Turns out the power cable on my dvdr drive was not on properly

Cheers anyway marc.

Mattus · 14 Sep 2008 at 00:38

Run a virus scan all the same.

Is it ntoskrnl, or ntoskml? ntoskrnl is the kernel code which sits at the core of Windows. I would be surprised to see it showing up in your process manager. ntoskml sounds like it might be a virus trying to imitate it!

Schnippzle · 15 Sep 2008 at 12:17

Thank you Mattus.....but I found out what I had done. During my restructuring of cables, I had not plugged in the power cable for my sata dvdr drive properly....which was the cause of my problems. Hurah for idiocy

Schnippzle · 15 Sep 2008 at 12:18

Mattus said:
I would be surprised to see it showing up in your process manager. ntoskml sounds like it might be a virus trying to imitate it!

I used process explorer to get a more indepth view of what was goin on

bledd · 15 Sep 2008 at 12:42

as two people have pointed out, ntoskml.exe is a virus

Schnippzle · 15 Sep 2008 at 13:01

bledd. said:
as two people have pointed out, ntoskml.exe is a virus

Thank you, but as I said this only happened after I had moved some cables around which caused the sata dvdr power cable to come loose. The problem only existed during the time when the cable was not connected properly. It may have been that I originally mis-typed the name of the file. Also, as previously mentioned I did not see notskml.exe (if this was the right one) in Task Manager, I used Process Explorer to check the thread properties of the System process.