cpu maxing out when ever i download

Soldato
Joined
15 Sep 2006
Posts
2,896
Location
Edinburgh
hey guys been having a problem on and off with my pc for a while, narrowed it down to when ever i download something my cpu usage goes up as far as 100% in task manager and i get pauses and stuttering.

it doesn't seem to matter whether it is firefox, steam, battlenet or epic games launcher kinda getting stumped.

when im not downlaoding my cpu usage drops to 0-3% and all my games run fine, every time i run malware bytes or za nothing gets picked up except the occasional tracking cookie.

pc specs :
running win 10 home all up to date and i have zone alarm av/fire wall
gigabyte g1.sniper z170 motherboard
i5 6600k stock
8 gig ddr 4 2666
radeon rx480 8 gig reference card
kingston 240 gig ssd and 2 mechanical drives, only windows and essential programs are on the ssd, all games etc are on the 2 mechanical ones.
 
You may be able to tell which application/service is using the CPU using Task Manager (hit the 'More details' option if you haven't) and/or Resource Monitor.

I'd start by temporarily disabling ZoneAlarm (hadn't realised it still existed) and see if that makes any difference.
 
just went into za and disabled the antivirus and then the firewall no difference although windows complained they were off and then i disabled threat emulation on za and still the same. got a download on epics launcher and my cpu was only hitting 40-50% with za stuff on or off and i was still getting horrible stuttering untill i paused it.

yeh always got task manager showing detailed info, just paid attention with that download and system and system interupts were using most even at 34% cpu usage im getting constant stutter and pauses, even typing this is hard and moving the mouse with only 30% cpu usage untill i pause the download then its back to been smooth and rapid.

very weird, windows says my hdd's are in healthy condition as well, also uninstalled my motherboards network chip thing in device manager the other night as well and put in the latest driver but not much difference if any, edit: it shows less cpu usage i think and that is all.

thanks for the help very much appreciated, any other ideas as to what could be going on? :)

edit: some times when i boot up it's like above then i reboot and every thing is fine, just updated the logitech software for my mouse (g402) and rebooted and now it is smooth with downloads again and things like system interupts takes up less than 1%.

hopefully it was the logitech driver if not ill report back, as it seems a bit random lol
 
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Thats one badly written mouse driver! It might be worth poking about in the BIOS to see if there are any IRQ related options that don't look right.
If it was while actually while downloading, rather than a post download scan, then its your network chip not playing nice with your USB chip. Very weird for a mouse driver the have that effect.
 
think i might have it nailed, due to how it randomly occurred and the frequency of it.

no matter what happened a reboot would always fix it and it randomly occurred on a cold boot after a shut down.

i was chasing a unrelated or so i thought issue earlier, sound was crackly on a video it was crackling only when people spoke, so i looked up google and read through tons of comments, a lot of the comments say a reboot fixes that issue.

rings a bell a reboot fixes it and comes at random.

turns out it was the fast boot option on windows 10 i can choose shut down now and cold boot instead of windows trying to load a previous file of every thing wtf lol

done that and rebooted then shut down, and had my first proper cold boot and the file windows trys to load is not affected by the restart option and is like a cold boot, i was getting so annoyed at having to boot up my comp then 50/50 if it does that issue and then having to restart if it does lol

think it might be solved, also explains how after i done a restart with the mouse drivers it was working fine..... lmao

im pretty drunk at the moment so i might not be coming across as clearly as i would like but i think it is sorted and thought i would dig this up for any one that is having the same problems, it was affecting my streaming as well, since i done that earlier all the sound has been crackle free and no sound going out of sync even on hour long videos :)
 
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