Peculiar Kernel Usage Numbers

[Dormouse]

Noticing an odd issue, older brother ran across it on the same basic box [hp brio 433]. It seems that sometimes [on reboots or in his case when it went into low power mode then spun up again], more or less irregardless of programs actually running or no the kernal cpu usage sits aaveraging 60-70%. Now the even more peculiar thing is that for instance wiggling the cursor around the screen quickly will in fact dramatically /lower/ the cpu usage during that interval.

[This is noted in the trough in this screenshot of sysmon:
http://blargh.mine.nu/test/61/5.jpg

So basically, i'm a bit perplexed.

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Blue Mink Bifocals ! (http://dormouse.spyw.com/)
Capite Terram (http://villainsupply.com/)
"Its easy for you to think you know what you are talking about Dor, cause you dont know, so you dont know wether it is right or wrong." -Ubuu-
"If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.." -A Scanner Darkly [Philip K Dick]-
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

[Korin]

It sounds like a low-priority background process. See if it does the same thing in safe mode. Run msconfig, disable any extraneous programs or processes, and check for spyware or viruses.

[edit]In the same vein, the operating system might be swapping to the hard drive. My old computer would occasionally mildly thrash for hours at a time.

[This message has been edited by Korin (edited August 15, 2003).]

[Dormouse]

No unusual background processes in the tasks list at least, those are ll normal and kosher.

Running a virus scan now. The bit that has me really confused is why failing the mouse around the screen decreases the percent so much.

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Blue Mink Bifocals ! (http://dormouse.spyw.com/)
Capite Terram (http://villainsupply.com/)
"Its easy for you to think you know what you are talking about Dor, cause you dont know, so you dont know wether it is right or wrong." -Ubuu-
"If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.." -A Scanner Darkly [Philip K Dick]-
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

[Dormouse]

Virus scan came up clean. However now spybot search and destroy refuses to load. I have to end-task it and it doesn't actually open. This has me somewhat concerned. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling to no effect.

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Blue Mink Bifocals ! (http://dormouse.spyw.com/)
Capite Terram (http://villainsupply.com/)
"Its easy for you to think you know what you are talking about Dor, cause you dont know, so you dont know wether it is right or wrong." -Ubuu-
"If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.." -A Scanner Darkly [Philip K Dick]-
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

[Cool Matty]

Try ad-aware then. It's about as good as Spybot.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...

[Korin]

Low-priority processes only use the CPU when it is otherwise idle. I would imagine moving the mouse increases the CPU usage enough that it no longer classified as idle. It's just a guess, though.

[Dormouse]

Didn't run across anything in ad-aware either. Decided to go ahead and defrag all my disks last night as well. I'm more perplexed by spybot not loading as anything at this point.

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Blue Mink Bifocals ! (http://dormouse.spyw.com/)
Capite Terram (http://villainsupply.com/)
"Its easy for you to think you know what you are talking about Dor, cause you dont know, so you dont know wether it is right or wrong." -Ubuu-
"If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.." -A Scanner Darkly [Philip K Dick]-
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

[Dormouse]

It seems to be related to memory-scrubbing programs. I have a couple different utilities i've tried to free up locked and unused physical memory when those get stagnant, and they do so quite nicely, however regardless of which one i use it seems to jump cpu usage up to about 60%+ and it doesn't go down after that even after closing the program. Bit ironic and odd.

edit: well after some more pottering, it seems to be in fact inconsistent and unrelated to pretty much anything or lack of anything. Blah. This is confusing.
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Blue Mink Bifocals ! (http://dormouse.spyw.com/)
Capite Terram (http://villainsupply.com/)
"Its easy for you to think you know what you are talking about Dor, cause you dont know, so you dont know wether it is right or wrong." -Ubuu-
"If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.." -A Scanner Darkly [Philip K Dick]-
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

[This message has been edited by Dormouse (edited August 16, 2003).]

[Dormouse]

No apparent change in anything after anti-virus defrags and all that. The annoying bit is that the usage only drops for mundane mouse-flailing sorts of activities, everything else just adds on to the top which really is a bother when it's already idlinga t like 80% usage..

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Blue Mink Bifocals ! (http://dormouse.spyw.com/)
fsck -Rf /world/usr/ (http://deadkittyp.com/)
Capite Terram (http://villainsupply.com/)
"Stupid English language... Why does nothing rhyme with 'primordial goo'???" -happydud
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');