High CPU and RAM Usage

Greetings, everyone.

To provide some context, this is how my Task Manager currently appears:
http://tinypic.com/r/2i90aoi/9

I would be most grateful for any assistance you might be able to offer. Thank you!

Try right-clicking the app you think is hogging the CPU in Task Manager and hit "Set Affinity." Just limit it to, say, 2 cores instead of 4.

Casey Mitchell41 said:Try right-clicking the app you think is hogging the CPU in Task Manager and hit "Set Affinity." Just limit it to, say, 2 cores instead of 4.

I will certainly give that suggestion a try, though my primary concern remains the excessive RAM Usage. This has become a frequent issue lately, whereas previously, everything functioned without such strain. Furthermore, I attempted to upgrade to Windows 10, but the update failed to complete successfully, leaving me with nothing but a massive amount of wasted hard drive space.
It is important to emphasize that these complications were non-existent before; the computer was performing flawlessly, and I have not installed any new, resource-intensive software. Could we be looking at a potential virus, or is this simply a case of Windows 8.1 becoming unstable?

Since I can't see your total RAM Usage or what kind of CPU you're running, I can't really tell you if this is normal or not... Just curious, how long after booting up Windows does the CPU/RAM spike hit? And what are you actually doing when it happens?

Maria Richardson2 said:I will certainly give that suggestion a try, though my primary concern remains the excessive RAM Usage. This has become a frequent issue lately, whereas previously, everything functioned without such strain. Furthermore, I attempted to upgrade to Windows 10, but the update failed to complete successfully, leaving me with nothing but a massive amount of wasted hard drive space.
It is important to emphasize that these complications were non-existent before; the computer was performing flawlessly, and I have not installed any new, resource-intensive software. Could we be looking at a potential virus, or is this simply a case of Windows 8.1 becoming unstable?

Then this won't help much—it sounds like a virus might be causing all this. Run an antivirus scan immediately and do a deep system check.
If that doesn't work, let us know exactly what's going on and what you're suspicious of.

Does anyone have a recommendation for which antivirus I should be using?

The issue arises immediately upon booting up Windows. While the operating system itself loads quite rapidly, problems start right away.
If you examine the Task Manager, you will notice that there are no active programs running in the background, yet my RAM Usage is hovering near 50%. Furthermore, the system behaves as though three Google Chrome windows are currently open, even though I have closed them entirely.
My current hardware configuration consists of 4 GB of RAM and an Intel G1820 2.70 processor.

Everything was functioning perfectly before this, but now, while I am in the middle of playing Civilization III, the game abruptly crashes and displays a "low memory" error message.

Avira, looks like it's $13 for a year or maybe $17 if you decide to grab the Avira optimizer too 👍

Just grab an antivirus from a site and run the updates—then scan your PC. I’d drop a link for you, but we don't do piracy on this forum.

I have successfully installed Avast, ensuring my system remains free from any viruses.

What should my next steps be?

Grab the free version of Malwarebytes and run a full scan on your PC—once that's done, head over to their site and download AdwCleaner and JRT as well. Run those scans, give your computer a quick restart, and then let's see if things start behaving any better...

Honestly, I don't see anything sketchy here. 🤷
Chrome is definitely eating up some CPU cycles, but I'm guessing there's just some heavy site running in the background or something...
RAM Usage looks fine to me.

ironcyclist58 said:Honestly, I don't see anything sketchy here. 🤷
Chrome is definitely eating up some CPU cycles, but I'm guessing there's just some heavy site running in the background or something...
RAM Usage looks fine to me.

However, Chrome had already been closed at the moment the Task Manager was accessed and the screenshot captured, yet the system still shows three separate Chrome processes residing in memory. Is it not reasonable to conclude that the RAM Usage is actually far from okay, given that absolutely nothing should be open? Nothing was active aside from the Task Manager itself.
Furthermore, I am currently plagued by a multitude of Service Host : Local system processes running in the background that I simply cannot seem to terminate.

Looks like Chrome is still hanging around; just kill it in Task Manager. Does this happen all the time, or is it just a one-off thing right now?
I don't see why those Service Hosts bother you so much—they're barely pulling a few dozen MB of RAM usage...
How can you be sure they aren't actually necessary and that you're safe to kill them? There's a good chance you actually need them. For instance, I've got dozens of those processes running on my end...
How much RAM are you running anyway?

Larry Ortiz5 said:Grab the free version of Malwarebytes and run a full scan on your PC—once that's done, head over to their site and download AdwCleaner and JRT as well. Run those scans, give your computer a quick restart, and then let's see if things start behaving any better...

I have already done exactly that.
The current state of things is as follows: (showing my desktop with nothing open except Task Manager)

What should my next course of action be? I am still being kicked out of my game by that persistent "exception 0 xe06d7363 0 x9a168a5c" error message.
Should I perhaps go ahead and uninstall the Malwarebytes service to see if freeing up some RAM Usage helps?
Surely there must be some other solution available to me beyond just that one option.

Maria Richardson2 said:What should my next course of action be? I am still being kicked out of my game by that persistent "exception 0 xe06d7363 0 x9a168a5c" error message.
Should I perhaps go ahead and uninstall the Malwarebytes service to see if freeing up some RAM Usage helps?
Surely there must be some other solution available to me beyond just that one option.

What is actually going on with your setup...
You're running 4 GB of RAM, which is basically the bare minimum you need to run Windows smoothly. If that isn't cutting it for you, why not just head down to Best Buy and buyyyy another 4 GB?
Trying to obsess over every little bit of RAM usage is honestly just a waste of time. It's pretty pointless, really.

Yeah, I don't get it either...
The system has 2/3 of its RAM Usage sitting idle, yet it’s still struggling to pull down a few dozen MBs. I have no idea what it's actually trying to accomplish here. 🤷

ironcyclist58 said:Yeah, I don't get it either...
The system has 2/3 of its RAM Usage sitting idle, yet it’s still struggling to pull down a few dozen MBs. I have no idea what it's actually trying to accomplish here. 🤷

Probably just used to Windows XP and lightweight browsers back when you could actually get by on 2GB...

I mean, even if that's true, he’s got a massive amount of free RAM available... it's not like his usage is hitting 90% or anything...

Maria Richardson2 said:However, Chrome had already been closed at the moment the Task Manager was accessed and the screenshot captured, yet the system still shows three separate Chrome processes residing in memory. Is it not reasonable to conclude that the RAM Usage is actually far from okay, given that absolutely nothing should be open? Nothing was active aside from the Task Manager itself.
Furthermore, I am currently plagued by a multitude of Service Host : Local system processes running in the background that I simply cannot seem to terminate.

This smells like faulty RAM. Try replacing it and see if the issue persists. Are you seeing any other strange, random errors popping up?
One more thing—disable those annoying Windows update features and similar background tasks. Just find an online guide to walk you through it; it’s enough to drive anyone crazy, leading them to start downloading and scanning everything in sight. My girlfriend had a similar issue on her new laptop, and that's how I ruled out software issues, though she wasn't getting errors, just constant freezing and high HDD usage.
Also, download Spybot Anti-Beacon.