[RESOLVED] Audio driver consuming 99% cpu

[dolot]

My PC has been running along fine for years, except for just getting generally slower through the years. The last few days, though, a problem has developed. Sometimes an svchost process will begin to consume 99% of the cpu's. It never stops on its own, and everything drags to a crawl, so I just go to task manager and kill the svchost process. After that, I have no sound. When I check the sound devices, Windows indicates that nothing is installed, so I'm assuming that by killing that svchost process the sound driver is killed as well.

So I've done a scan with eset and hitmanpro and they don't show anything. I can't find my driver version online anywhere. There was one driver version that looked newer, but the website seemed suspicious to me. The OEM doesn't have a website where you can download replacement drivers, at least not that I've found.

This driver is a SoundMax Integrated Audio by Analog Devices.
Version 5.12.1.7000
published 3/22/2005

Any ideas what may be going on?

[Nightwalker83]

Have you downloaded anything that could be the cause of the problem within the last few days?

[dolot]

Hard to say - it's my wife's computer. Neither she or my daughters remember installing anything.

[dolot]

OK. I used TaskList to give me the list of items running under the offending svchost process. It's a bunch. Is there a way to tell windows to run each item in a separate svchost process? That might narrow things down somewhat.

Anyway, here's the list:

AudioSrv,
Browser,
CryptSvc,
Dhcp,
EventSystem,
FastUserSwitchingCompatibility,
helpsvc,
HidServ,
lanmanserver,
lanmanworkstation,
Netman,
Nla,
RasMan,
Schedule,
seclogon,
SENS,
SharedAccess,
ShellHWDetection,
srservice,
TapiSrv,
Themes,
TrkWks,
w32time,
winmgmt,
wscsvc,
wuauserv,
WZCSVC

More later...

[dolot]

So the problem resurfaced again and I checked tasklist again. This time I have a shorter list:

EventSystem,
helpsvc,
Netman,
Nla,
RasMan,
Schedule,
SENS,
TapiSrv,
Themes,
w32time,
winmgmt,
wuauserv

The story continues...

[Nightwalker83]

I vaguely remember hearing something about network connection might cause issues with some drivers so if the computer is on a network try disconnecting and see if the problem persists.

[dolot]

I finally went in and turned off the offending services one by one to see which one might be causing the problem, and the winner is... Windows Update!

No big deal if that's turned off. I just have to give myself a reminder every month or two to turn it back on and check for updates.

Thanks for trying, though - I appreciate it.