My computer is running slow, but task manager doesn't show excessive cpu or memory usage. Why?

Question

My computer is running very slow, so I opened up the task manager expecting to see excessive cpu or memory usage. Nothing. So I closed all applications other than task manager. Still slow. Then I opened up the resource monitor, and found the cpu being used almost to the max! What could cause such a discrepancy? Another words, why does taskmgr show barely any cpu usage, while the resource monitor shows that the cpu is overloaded?

EDIT: Others have pointed out that I incorrectly identified the blue line in the resource monitor as cpu usage. Thank you for that, but I still don't know what to do about my slow computer.

Solution

It could be your I/O subsystem, but if you aren't doing anything, this should not be causing the slow downs you've described. Sounds more like you have some background process that are not playing nice. I've fixed more than my share of friends and family computers displaying these symptoms and here is what I do...

1. Disable everything in Startup that is non-critical and then re-enable them one at a time if you really need it to fire at Startup.
2. Update your AV program and definitions
3. Download HiJackThis and Malwarebytes, free edition
4. Install Malwarebytes
5. Boot into safe mode
6. Run AV - full scan - fix anything that is found
7. Run Malwarebytes for adware/malware - fix anything that is found that you don't recognize. Sometimes, these programs identify legitimate processes that can be ignored.
8. Boot into normal mode and run HiJackThis . You can send the log to the HiJackThis community or try to analyze and repair anything you see.
9. Download CCleaner and cleanup temporary items and the registry

At this point you can reboot again and then start poking around. My bet is that your scans will uncover some things you didn't know you were running. You should see a noticeable difference after doing all of this.

Comments

[user364455]

Where did you see overloaded CPU on resource monitor screenshot?

[user3685285]

Look at the blue line in the top graph: CPU_Total. Plus, the computer is unbearably slow. I have like 12 cores, 24 logical processors, 16 GB RAM, and it takes me 10 seconds to click on something in windows explorer. Doesn't make sense. This is the only trace of bottleneck I've found. As you can see, task manager was useless.

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

The blue line = % of max. processor frequency, not CPU usage (that's the green). See the link for more info.

[LPChip]

This could be a simple case of performance being limited due to a balanced power setting. Try going to Control Panel, Power Options, and make sure the "High Performance" powerplan is selected. If this is the case, the improvement should be immediately.

[magicandre1981]

what is slow in detail?

[user3685285]

The mouse is not slow. But when I mouse over the start button for instance, it takes a good 5 - 10 seconds to acknowledge that it has been moused over and light up. This goes for anything in the start menu. It takes even longer when I click to change to a different window. That can take 10 - 30 seconds. And doing anything in the window? Forget about it. This is consistent behavior, and only happens after not shutting the computer down for a few days, so something is definitely building up over time in the background.

[Seth]

What about memory utilization and I/O load?

[Cas]

I agree with @Seth, I once had a laptop that had good specs but the hard drive was unbearably slow, causing everything else to slow down with it.

[user3685285]

But as you can see from the pictures, I was barely using any memory, and had closed everything except for task manager and resource monitor. The issue is that it was enough for the OS to slow down. That is what is concerning me.

[magicandre1981]

capture a xperf trace of the slowness and share it: pastebin.com/JLz6FW18

[magicandre1981]

have you captured the trace? Otherwise I can't help you

[Rahul]

do you want to say hijackthis or hackthis ?

[Rahul]

could you please provide a link to download HackThis

[Steve Mangiameli]

Update; supposed to be HiJackThis