Performance % ramps up for CPU, Mem & Power until Task Mgr is opened

[WonderWoman]

Hello,

I am on Windows 10 Home but have been on an insider preview channel for a very long time without many issues at all until now. Yes, I get the obvious point about to be made by everyone. I am also the same person that has just posted about imminently switching to Win 10 Pro but having a challenge doing so. That issue is/has been addressed in the other post.

I have been facing the problem I am about to describe for a while but it is finally getting on my last nerve and since I will be delayed on upgrading to pro for a little bit I have decided to address the problem. The issue is that I will be using my laptop (parameters of my laptop provided below) it will consistently, spontaneously have the fan turn on and that is the indication to me that the performance is being taken over by "something" causing either my CPU, RAM or Power to ramp up really high percentage wise sometimes even to 100%. but within a few moments of my opening my task manager it starts to drop completely to normal ranges. I am wondering if anyone has ever experienced anything like this or knows what might be going on? I am a help desk tech with 25 yrs experience in the "biz" and I run a tight ship with an extremely clean machine.

Here's the config of my machine:

HP DV7 6b32US Laptop purchased in 2011. I have upgraded it nicely over the years and I am still quite happy with it. The upgrades now on the laptop have it in the condition of the following:

Windows 10 Home - but here's the "cute" wrinkle - important later - I am on the fast ring of the Windows 10 Insider Preview Channel (IPC)

C: Drive is: (recently upgraded) Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD

Second physical internal drive of 2TB I think it is a Hitachi 1TB mechanical

16GB RAM

Intel Core i7 Quad core - 2.4 ghz

Malwarebytes for the security software and Windows Defender Firewall


I will update this thread with a screenshot of my task manager the next time the issue happens. All comments and suggestions appreciated. Please do not suggest wiping out and doing a clean install as I have too many programs installed and plan on doing an upgrade in place to Win 10 Pro shortly.


Sincerely,


Princess Wonder Woman

 

[DVDR_Dog]

I missed this post entirely. Blame it on the virus.
First that's a pretty old laptop you have there. HP EOL that system a long time ago, that might be part of the issue.
So here's my first question. ATI (AMD now) graphics or Intel integrated?
I am thinking ATI because that would explain your problem and you would be far from the first to experience it.
You have to keep in mind a few things.
HP is known for tweaking their drivers, graphics and power control are the usual victims.
These drivers are sometimes equipment dependent the CPU surge is more than likely related to your graphics driver being moved to a wake state.
As far as the other problems I will go back to the age of your system and the fact HP EOL the system quite some time ago. Microsoft Windows 10 installs rely on generic drivers which may or may not be 100% compatible with your DV7. None of these drivers were vetted by HP for DV7s Win 10. HPs have a notorious power control problem and DV7s i7 systems had cooling issues. Even by your own admission HP DV7 systems will run Windows 10 albeit with some issues. ATI (AMD) graphics on any laptop have problems migrating to Windows 10 from systems originally designed to run Windows 7 or early versions of Windows 8. So your problem really is with HP but before you ask I will tell you they will tell you to buy a newer laptop.
Neither one of these issues are obscure. There are related past posts on this board as well as HP and other independent forums. The ultimate solution is go back to Windows 7 and run HP supplied OEM drivers. It ran well in that configuration I am sure. Other than that make sure your heat sinks are dust free and keep the cooling ducts uncovered. If you are feeling industrious you can open the machine scrape off that nasty paste used when HP installed the heat sinks and replace that with a thin uniform film of Arctic Silver or similar to increase cooling efficiency. I have done so with all my Windows laptops with good results.

 

[WonderWoman]

Hello,

First off a HUGE compliment....your information was the single most detailed and informative and on target reply I have received on this and I have posted this issue to multiple forums! So a HUGE THANK YOU!

Now, as to where things stand currently.

I had purchased an upgrade key to make the jump to Win 10 Pro because I am planning on going back to school for some computer certs to upgrade my skills which I feel I need to do. There are many things I neglected to learn and I intend to fix that. The additional features in Win 10 Pro will help with my schooling. That being said here's what that means in detail.

I was on the Win 10 Home Insider Preview Channel Fast Ring originally for a long time with no problems except what was listed here which could have also happened if I was not on the IPC at all. I had also reviewed the condition for size allocation on my drive and decided that holding onto the 2 recovery partitions that were originally set up on the drive by HP was a waste of resources because I do not intend to go backwards to Win 7 at all ever so I merged my partitions into one giant C: drive blowing away the recovery partition and HP Tools partition. Going backwards to 7 is no longer an option - as stated was never going to be.

I plan on putting your suggestions about the drivers into action because that makes sense and is something I truly never thought about. <**Updated info after posting**> I went to the HP website to try to obtain specific drivers and they do not offer anything downloadable for OS past Win 7 64 bit for my laptop. Any other suggestions on how to get specific drivers to try out your suggestions? I also posted this same specific question on the community boards on HP.

Regarding my upgrading to W10 Pro I had to perform it as a full clean install because between the fact that I merged all partitions blowing away the recovery partition and the fact that I was on an IPC the "upgrade in place" could not be performed as it kept throwing a fatal error message and would not function. I am now currently on W10 Pro happily finally. I have noticed that I still get the performance ramp up problem so again, I am going to pursue your driver suggestion.

I have attached a text file which is the exported info from the sysinfo on my system. I checked the display info and I apparently have the Intel graphics not AMD/ATI graphics.

As for cooling my system I recently purchased a cooling pad for my laptop because I felt it couldn't hurt to have one. I know this unit is old (probably a great great grandparent in computer years - worse than dog years) but it still runs like a champion for me and I cannot afford a new computer just now but I do have it on the horizon. I plan on building a few things for myself for a refresher course of sorts and to upgrade my skills I also intend to build my own server (sorry for digressing a bit there). I still cannot believe how much of a gigantic difference in boot up and response time the upgrade to an SSD drive from old mech drive has made. I now boot fully into Win in a maximum of one minute to one minute and a half; previously I could make a cup of coffee before the old mech drive would boot me fully into Win.

Are there any programs or apps that I can use to "log" the events to review and see what happens to trigger the "ramp up"? Doing something like that is new territory and I like being in new territory as it is an opportunity to learn.


Thank you for your help. I look forward to your reply.


Sincerely,


Princess Wonder Woman

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Alright WW here's the deal after looking at your system specs.
The thing that jumps out at me is the Intel HD Graphics 3000.
Intel discontinued support for that integrated graphics chipset with Windows 8 (not 8.1) and that's a long time ago.
HP last updated your BIOS in 2013.
No doubt that's a part of your problem. M/S rewrote the rules for graphic systems and drivers with Windows 10 and even then it has evolved over the series of updates. There have been discussions on this board regarding that and as a tech I have to fight with some of the Windows 7/8 systems that have upgraded to Windows 10. Touchscreens can be even more of a nightmare.

Add to that the ever-present but mysterious Windows 10 power management problems HP laptops have. The ones with the only solution is to power them off and hold the power button down for an extended period to drain all the power including the capacitors. Sometimes that works, sometimes it then returns, sometimes it doesn't work at all. No one I found has a clue why this works only sometimes it does.

Lastly you have a missing driver. HP calls this hardware "HP 3D DriveGuard" which maybe a nice idea but if you look where it resides and the resources it uses well I won't comment.
Install this driver.

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp64001-64500/sp64144.exe

It may free up a little resource but it's never good to have an IRQ without a special purpose defined. Ask Steve Martin in the movie "The Jerk" about a special purpose.


So all I can tell you is if the performance hit and problems are insurmountable, go back to Windows 7. M/S released the Chrome powered version of Edge for 7 I guess so Google didn't have an exclusive.
It is what it is WW. M/S is gonna blame Intel, Intel will say they EOL that chip and HP will tell you to buy a new system.

 

[WonderWoman]

Thank you for your help. You have been truly knowledgeable and well expressed. This comment is coming from a person who before becoming a tech was an administrative assistant in a Sony Law Department so I tend to notice typos and grammatical errors and you certainly to your credit had none that I noticed.....Reading formerly well respected news publications (online and printed) like the NY Times and such has become an eye rolling course in humor and embarrassment for them.

Sincerely,

Princess Wonder Woman