There are many occasions when, seemingly out of the blue, the processor is set to 100% loading and slows down the entire PC considerably. Don’t worry, this is usually perfectly normal, and in this article we’ll explain it to you. why does it happen and what should you do to solve the problem.
The processor is the brain of the computer: all commands go through it, and it must take into account absolutely everything that happens on your PC, from downloading a file to generating textures for a game. However, having the CPU go to 100% suddenly for no apparent reason can be a problem, especially if it causes the whole PC to start working with it extremely slow.
100% processor, why is this happening?
We’re going to start the article off being “well thought out”, and we’re guessing that something is actually going on on PC to force the CPU to perform at its best. The first thing you have to do is check what is causing the processor to go to 100%, and for this the ideal is to open the task manager (right click on the start button -> Task Manager or simply press on the key combination CTRL + SHIFT + ESC).
Once you have done this and see which process is causing the CPU to be at 100%, you can now have an idea of what is going on and what you need to do to fix it. Next, we will give you the most frequent examples under Windows:
- system failures: Hardware interrupts in Windows relate to hardware and operating system communication channels; interrupt signals are sent to the processor, and if an interrupt has a higher priority than other processes, this phenomenon occurs. How to fix it? You can just wait for it to finish, or if things are taking too long, restart the PC directly. If that doesn’t fix the problem, make sure to install any pending Windows updates, it usually works. You can also try updating your hardware drivers.
- Wsappx: Although it has a strange name, it is a completely normal Windows service, and it has to do with the operating system’s Windows Store. Again, it’s best to wait for it to finish, although you can also check for OS updates. In the end, you can deactivate the Windows Store (in the following link we tell you how to do this and everything you need to know about WSAPPX).
- Antimalware service executable: This is surely the most common of all, and as its name suggests, it has to do with the Windows Defender Antimalware service itself. It usually appears when you have downloaded a file from the Internet or when you copy information from an external drive to your storage drive, and it is a process that precisely finds and eliminates viruses and malware. The recommendation is to let it finish, but you can finish it by restarting the PC.
watch out for viruses
There are times when, unfortunately, no matter how many precautions we try to take, a virus manages to enter the computer and starts doing its job. A while back, viruses that used your CPU to mine cryptocurrencies remotely, constantly driving it to 100%, were all the rage. In Task Manager, you will see that there are processes with unknown names that are consuming 100% CPU, although they often have the name Execution Broker.
Although this process may also cause you problems due to Microsoft One Drive, it is often related to viruses, especially if it is something constant and does not end with time or even restarting the PC. In this case, we recommend that you restart Windows in safe mode and scan it completely with antivirus software, because your PC may be infected.
