Task manager shows high CPU but ‘user’ shows differently

cpu usagetask-manager

I've been having a recent problem lately with my CPU usage. It's literally always around 90%-100% but in task manager under 'user' it says differently. Even when I do a rough calculation of the processes, they don't add up to what task manager or performance monitor (Advanced System Care) says it is. What's going on?

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Best Answer

The system process causes high CPU usage.

To diag the CPU usage issues, you should use Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) to capture CPU Sampling data (not precise, this is useful to detect hangs).

To capture the data, install the Windows Performance Toolkit, which is part of the Windows 10 SDK.

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Now run WPRUI.exe, select First Level, under Resource select CPU usage and click on start.

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Now capture 1 minute of the CPU usage. After 1 minute click on Save.

Now analyze the generated ETL file with the Windows Performance Analyzer by drag & drop the CPU Usage (sampled) graph to the analysis pane and order the colums like you see in the picture:

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Inside WPA, load the debug symbols and expand Stack of the SYSTEM process. In this demo, the CPU usage comes from the nVIDIA driver.

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