Windows 7 being an @$$

Indigo

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I've got an Intel based system here, specs in a moment, that suddenly stopped working right with its DVDRW drive. It would read discs, but wouldn't burn them. So I replaced the drive, and noticed that the system was also exhibiting issues on startup. Specifically, during the process of logging on to the domain, it would sometimes take upwards of 5-7 minutes for the desktop to appear. If I boot to safe mode with networking, logging in is instant. We tested the network, there's no authentication issues at this time.

Also troubling is that the system has a 25% CPU load (spread out, not on any one core) due to the "system" process. Since the system is a quad core (one of the i5 quads) that's roughly 25% of the total CPU capacity just for that one process. CPU temps aren't really affected, and I can't find any reason for this problem.

I've run a Sophos anti-rootkit, Malware Bytes, and a full CCLeaner. I've also run a full system file checker (no issues) and a full chkdsk (also no issues). AV is Microsoft Forefront.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what is causing this issue. I'm not an Intel guy primarily, but I've *never* run into this sort of issue on an AMD system before.

I want to avoid reloading the OS, but seeing as how I'm running out of programs to test the system with, I don't see that I have any other choices. The user's data is vast, out of a 640GB WD HDD, he's got about 385GB of data that he can't lose on here.

System Specs:
Intel DP55WB motherboard
Intel Core i5-750
PNY GeForce 8400GS Fanless Video Card (PCIe)
4GB Kingston PC3-1066
Western Digital 640GB HDD
Samsung DVDRW Drive
Antec 80Plus 350 PSU

There are several other systems identical to this one, this is the only one with this issue, and only recently - the user has been using it for a while now without any problems.

I've also tested the PSU, it's fine - voltages are all within spec. CPU/Motherboard temps are also fine.
 
I've got an Intel based system here, specs in a moment, that suddenly stopped working right with its DVDRW drive. It would read discs, but wouldn't burn them. So I replaced the drive...

Does the original drive work in another computer?

... and noticed that the system was also exhibiting issues on startup. Specifically, during the process of logging on to the domain, it would sometimes take upwards of 5-7 minutes for the desktop to appear.

What about just logging into the machine? Not in safe mode...

If I boot to safe mode with networking, logging in is instant. We tested the network, there's no authentication issues at this time.

Also troubling is that the system has a 25% CPU load (spread out, not on any one core) due to the "system" process. Since the system is a quad core (one of the i5 quads) that's roughly 25% of the total CPU capacity just for that one process. CPU temps aren't really affected, and I can't find any reason for this problem.

I've run a Sophos anti-rootkit, Malware Bytes, and a full CCLeaner. I've also run a full system file checker (no issues) and a full chkdsk (also no issues). AV is Microsoft Forefront.

I've read HiJackThis is good.

What about a system restore?


I want to avoid reloading the OS, but seeing as how I'm running out of programs to test the system with, I don't see that I have any other choices. The user's data is vast, out of a 640GB WD HDD, he's got about 385GB of data that he can't lose on here.

Do you have anything he can back that data up on? External?

If you do reload the OS in the end, partition the drive if you can as an OS partition and then file storage partition to avoid situations like this in the future ;)
 
Just logging into the computer exhibits the same issue.

HiJackthis is clean.
System restore had no effect
No external backup available
Drive is already partitioned, just not enough for his data, and the policy here is to only partition for page files.
 
Did the original CDROM work in another comp? If it does, that could be an indicator that the installation has gone bad...
 
I think you're stuck in "individual user mode". This is one of several Windows 7 Enterprise PCs that has been working normally for several months since it was upgraded to Windows 7. This system is thus at work.

However, I did stumble across something today that I think might be it.

I thought I'd start the system in VGA mode to sidestep the video driver a little so that I could install the new version. The CPU was at 0% usage once I finished logging into the system, so I thought that was the issue. I glanced to the system tray however and noticed that the network icon was showing disconnected. I had unplugged the network cord before I left last night, so I plug it back in so that I could get to the driver on the network file share.

POOF. 25% CPU utilization again. Disconnecting the cord didn't help, the CPU remained at 25% usage with the "system" process hogging the 25%. I tried to uninstall the NIC, but the system was already gnawing on the kernel too much, so I just restarted it and am going to try logging in again without the network cable connected to see if I have a similar response.
 
You could have a "wake on Lan" virus on the computer that's not being detected. I've seen this many a times and as noted in some other thread somewhere, I used to be a part of a group that would infect PC's with this type of malware to 'steal' bandwidth for file sharing purposes.
Try this, unplug then reboot to recreate the 0% CPU ut. then open the task manager, take note of the system processes running and mem usage so you know which ones should be there. Then plug in the ethernet and take note of new processes distinguished by their mem usage.
 
Don't think it's that either. The rest of the network tests clean, and it only affects this one system and for a user who does a lot of video work (and thus a lot of data moving), I suspect, and so do the other two, that the NIC itself (onboard Intel chip) is going bad.

The high CPU usage was fixed by removing the iSCSI links that were set up for him so that he could access our NAS drives. If those links were having problems because the NIC was faulty, that would explain the high CPU usage while it tried to aggregate the excessive traffic on the network interface (excessive in this case is the NIC trying to establish the connections but can't do it at that level).

I didn't know about the iSCSI stuff until my boss suggested setting the iSCSI service to disabled and restarting, lo and behold, it fixed the CPU utilization issues.

I haven't ever dealt with iSCSI before, thus why I turned here for help. Thanks for your thoughts though IZ, I do appreciate your efforts. :)
 
Your issue here -->

My head down here -->

I'll remember all that next time I run into this issue :rolleyes: hahaha Thanks for posting back though with the fix
 
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