Windows 11 - System process 100% CPU and everything freezes for 30 seconds to a minute

Question

I'm having issue with Windows 11 version 21H2 build 22000.527. I'm running a fairly processing intensive test and it works pretty well. After about 2-5 minutes everything stops, I cannot switch between windows and eventually even the mouse freezes. The system hangs for about 30 seconds to a minute and then it starts working again for a few minutes and then starts over again.

I opened the Task Manager when I am able to work and can see that the System Process uses 100% CPU when it happens, disk and network usage almost 0.

How can troubleshoot and fix this issues?

Answer 1

Hi Schlumpfling42,

Thanks for your post in Microsoft Community.

I understand that you are running into a problem with system processes causing 100% CPU usage after running fairly intensive calculations.

There are many reasons why system processes occupy high CPU performance. You may not encounter a problem with the computer, but it is very likely that you have just run a large number of calculations.

A lot of intensive computing can cause this problem, you can try restarting the computer and see if the system process will become high and cause the system to hang without running the intensive test you ran before.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Kirk | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

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Answer 2

Hi Kirk,

I do not understand your reply.

When I run a CPU intensive test, a process called "System" takes over the 100% of the CPU (8 Cores, 16 Virtual CPUs) for 30-60 seconds and blocks everything ... keyboard, mouse, UI freezes. It's not happening after I run it, it's happening during the run. I don't have the issue when the test is not running.

How can I fix this issue?

Answer 3

Hi,

From your description, it's probably not a system bug. It may be that you are running an operation that causes the "system" process to start calling other threads constantly. It's also possible that your computations actually use "system" processes.

Since I don't know what computation you're doing, there's no way of knowing what the "system" process is calling.

Microsoft has a tool that can view the call records of the system process. If you want to study in-depth problems, you can try to use this tool to see what resources are called by the "system" process.

Tool link: Process Monitor - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs

Kirk | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

---

* Beware of scammers posting fake support numbers here.

* If your problem is not solved, you could reply to the post again and we would continue to provide technical support for you.

* Please check and vote this answer if it helps as it will be beneficial to more community members reading here.

Answer 4

Hi Kirk,

Thank you for your reply.

I run the process monitor and filtered by process name "System".

When the System process took over everything again, the process monitor stopped responding. I waited for about 10 minutes to see if it would recover, but it didn't.

Answer 5

Hi Kirk,

I tried a few more times, and I have an output now for the System process when it takes over everything.

I glanced through it, but I cannot see anything extraordinary.