High usage of Windows 10 resources by System

Question

My computer this morning was very slow.  I opened the Task Manager, and it told me that System was using about 50% of my CPU and memory resources.  I rebooted , but this didn't help.  (I also signed in with a different account, and the problem was the same.  So it is not specific to either of my two accounts.)  I found a site on Google , "How to Fix High RAM and CPU Usage of Windows 10 System (ntoskrnl.exe) Process."  Indeed, when I asked Task Manager what file System represented, it confirmed that it was ntoskrnl.exe. 

The site says that this is a known bug in Windows 10, and it gives a series of suggestions on how to fix it.  The author seems to be FOSSBYTES.  But I am reluctant to go fussing with my Registry unless I am reassured that this is all legitimate.  Does anyone here know about this issue?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.  (I have not been able to get through to MS Help to ask about this issue.  I am hoping that someone in the MS Community will be able to help me.)

Larry Hunsicker

Answer 1

Hello, I-m Betty, an independent advisor, it is my pleasure to help you today.

Do a complete scan with the antivirus of your preference looking for some type of malware, you can also verify that you do not have corrupt files in your Operating System through the sfc /scannow command

Press the Start key and type the word CMD, right click on the command prompt and select Run as administrator, enter the following commands one by one followed by the Enter key:

• DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth
• DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
• DISM.exe /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup
• sfc /scannow

Answer 2

Working on it.  So far no errors have cropped up.  The final sfc /scannow is taking for ever.  I'll follow up once this is done and I have rebooted to see whether all that has fixed the problem.  Thanks for the help!  Larry Hunsicker

Hamilton C shell(tm) x64 Release 5.2.g

Copyright (c) 1988-2017 by Hamilton Laboratories.  All rights reserved.

1 C% sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan.  This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.

Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

2 C% DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool

Version: 10.0.19041.572

Image Version: 10.0.19042.662

[==========================100.0%==========================] No component store corruption detected.

The operation completed successfully.

3 C%  DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool

Version: 10.0.19041.572

Image Version: 10.0.19042.662

[==========================100.0%==========================] The restore operation completed successfully.

The operation completed successfully.

4 C% DISM.exe /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool

Version: 10.0.19041.572

Image Version: 10.0.19042.662

[=====                      10.0%                          ]

[==========================100.0%==========================]

The operation completed successfully.

5 C% sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan.  This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.

Verification 39% complete.

Answer 3

Even after restarting, do you still have the same problem?

Answer 4

The last step in your program got slower and slower and finally stopped at 85% complete.  After about 2 hours, I simply closed the window and rebooted.  Task manager still shows cpu varying between 45% - 65% with 40% memory usage.  System usage is about 35%. 

What do I do now?

Larry Hunsicker

Answer 5

Sorry for not being able to solve your problem, I have no more knowledge regarding this, so I am going to release your question so that a colleague can help you in a better way.

Remember that the Microsoft community will always be there to help you.