"System" process high cpu utilization

Question

System process consisteltly takes around 25-30% CPU on my laptop, and it really slows down the entire system. I ran Windows performance analyzer, and this is the culprit stack that I found:

ntoskrnl.exe!KiStartSystemThread

• ntoskrnl.exe!PspSystemThreadStartup
  -- ntoskrnl.exe!ExpWorkerThread
  --- FLTMGR.SYS!FltpProcessGenericWorkItem
  ---- ctifile.sys!<PDB not found>

I tried both "dism /cleanup-image /online/ restorehealth" and "sfc -scannow", but it did not fix the issue. Is there any know fix for this issue?

Answer 1

See if placing the computer in clean boot makes any difference:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/41804-perform-clean-boot-windows-10-troubleshoot-software-conflicts.html

Some additional steps that sometimes help:

a) scan for malware

b) update the BIOS

c) update drivers

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