"System" process high CPU usage when idle in Windows 7

My main "System" process in Windows 7 is at a constant 10-15% usage at idle. There's no abnormal disk or network activity. I've run several different virus scanners and nothing shows up. I haven't installed anything new recently since this started happening either. This is also making my idle temps run 70-75C and obviously consuming more power. I can't quite figure it out.

 

How long has this been going on, maybe the system is running the auto defrag, trimming the SSD or something like that. I've noticed a spike in CPU usage when running the optimize feature for SSDs in Windows 8. In Windows 8, it's a bit harder to tell since you can't really know when it's taking care of TRIM on a SSD.

 

TRIM should happen immediately with file writes or deletes. In any case it shouldn't take 10-15% of CPU performance, and there was no high disk activity either. After a full shutdown and CMOS reset so far it hasn't happened.

 

This can happen for many reasons including defrag, indexing and other system maintenance routines. This is especially true where on reboot there is little to no issue as the maintenance routines are reset. It would be nice if M$ had a system console to actually show any current running maintenance routines along with progress etc. so you do not have to hunt them down...........

 

Try running Process Explorer for more details. Process Explorer

And also try Process Monitor for more info, including which files are being accessed. Process Monitor

 

That is one tool to help hunt them down. There are others as well but this is a great start. again it would be great for OS and even outside utilities if there were a console for all maintenance items to interface and report too for users to easily access. This would go against most of what has been done recently making the systems more of a hands off device than us retentive types that want even more control...........

 

Yes, excellent advice. In Process Explorer, by clicking system you can see, in the Threads tab, what exactly is churning CPU cycles. Unfortunately, if it would be ntoskrnl.exe, we're back at square one...

But I hope it is a badly written driver.

 

Indeed, it would be nice. Windows 8 (let's leave it's flaws and UI design choices aside for now) tells you when it's performing maintenance, but doesn't tell you what it does. It also makes the CPU spike at ~10-15% usage from my own observations.

 

Yeah one of the few nice things about Windows 8 is the much more informative Task Manager, which negates the need for Process Explorer to a certain extent.

 

While it really does little to help us control the system more, actually it probably makes it harder to by burying stuff, I do like the task manager and scheduler in windows 8 much better than that of windows 7.