Runaway processes take up all of the processors’ cycles. The usual suspects are badly written device drivers and legacy software installed on a newer operating system. You can identify a runaway process by looking at the process list in the Windows Task Manager (see Figure D). Any process that takes almost 100 percent of the processing time is likely a runaway process.
Figure D
Use the Task Manager to identify processes that are slowing the system.
We see an exception to this rule, however, if we click the button to Show Processes From All Users. On a smoothly running system, the System Idle Process should be consuming the majority of the processor cycles most of the time. If any other process were to take up 98 percent of the processor cycles, you might have a runaway process.
If you do find a runaway process, you can right-click it and click the End Process command. You may need to stop some processes, such as runaway system services, from the Services console. If you can’t stop the service using the console, you may need to reboot the system. Sometimes a hard reboot is required.
For more detailed information about running processes, check out Process Explorer 12.04, shown in Figure E. This is a handy little utility written by Mark Russinovich that includes powerful search capabilities.
Figure E
Process Explorer gives you more detailed information about running processes.
Figure D
We see an exception to this rule, however, if we click the button to Show Processes From All Users. On a smoothly running system, the System Idle Process should be consuming the majority of the processor cycles most of the time. If any other process were to take up 98 percent of the processor cycles, you might have a runaway process.
If you do find a runaway process, you can right-click it and click the End Process command. You may need to stop some processes, such as runaway system services, from the Services console. If you can’t stop the service using the console, you may need to reboot the system. Sometimes a hard reboot is required.
For more detailed information about running processes, check out Process Explorer 12.04, shown in Figure E. This is a handy little utility written by Mark Russinovich that includes powerful search capabilities.
Figure E
