Windows 10 Build 1511 – Overheating CPU, fan always running (process “System and compressed memory”)

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

I will be glad to assist you with the issue you are experiencing with the computer. I understand the difficulty when things won’t work the way they should.

Before proceeding as an initial recommendation, please check for the amount of hard disk space remaining, as the available free space is also responsible for Windows to run at optimal level of performance. Also, ensure to install any pending updates and also update all device drivers from Device Manager.

For the high CPU consumption issue, please use Performance Monitor to view performance data either in real time or from a log file.

The Resource Monitor lets you view detailed real-time information about hardware resources (CPU, disk, network, and memory) and system resources (including handles and modules) in use by the operating system, services, and running applications. In addition, you can use Resource Monitor to stop processes, start and stop services, analyze process deadlocks, view thread wait chains, and identify processes locking files.

Use the Performance tab in Task Manager to see how your computer's CPU is being used by Windows and other programs running on your computer.

1. Open Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar, and then clicking Start Task Manager.
2. Click the Performance tab.

A high percentage means that the programs or processes that are running require a lot of CPU resources, which can slow your computer. If the percentage appears frozen at or near 100%, then a program might not be responding. You may Exit a program that isn't responding.

I would suggest you to put your system in clean boot state and check if it helps.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

Disclaimer: After you have finished troubleshooting, follow these steps from section “How to reset the computer to start as usual after clean boot troubleshooting” to reset the computer to start as usual.

Hope this helps in resolving the issue. If the issue persists, do get back to us. We will be happy to assist you.

Thank you.

Thank you Ali for your response!

If you’ve read my summary above, I’ve already tried a clean boot; I called it diagnostic startup. I didn’t experience any problems. But I cannot exclude any issues as sometimes the problematic process starts after several minutes up to several hours after startup.

As for the disk space everything is perfect; drive C: 148GB free of 237GB.

I was hesitant to install Windows performance recorder since it is 6.5GB huge and I doubted that it would contribute any new information. I already know that “system and compressed memory” is troubling my CPU. I cannot identify any other questionable processes (see screenshot).

Well, I guess it’s a complex issue, connected to the individual hardware setup. For now, I stick to the restart option whenever I need to work on my computer. I other occasions I let it run; I’ve got some hope that it's some one-time optimization process which will eventually terminate. If that’s the case, it would be nice of Microsoft to provide an option to schedule it manually or show some progress status. I assume we need to be patient; some future Windows or driver update will hopefully fix it.

Just wanted to add my voice to this issue. I don't have much to add as OPs description is pretty much identical to mine.

I would note that I have this issue on my laptop and when it happens it seems to occur after resuming from hibernation. Restarting fixes it, otherwise it will just keep running at high CPU/Memory.

I would also note that it only started happening after I got the Windows 10 Threshold 2 update.

The only process using a noticeable amount of resources is "System and compressed memory". When it acts up it seems to always maintain a CPU usage of around 33% +/- 5%, and currently (as I type) is using more than a GB of RAM.

Other people talking about same issue (though no solutions):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3t19ko/why_is_system_and_compressed_memory_using_so_much/

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/system-and-compressed-memory-service-high-cpu/421c32bd-e65b-4339-9473-db775e50096a

I might have identified the culprit of this issue. Please try disabling Pre-/Superfetch as shown in this video:

Windows 10 Disable And Enable Prefetch And SuperFetch

The purpose of Superfetch is described in the following link. I guess its benefits are biggest on a HDD. Since my primary disk is a SSD the downside of this bug outweighs the benefits from prefetching. Please decide for yourself.

SuperFetch: How it Works & Myths

I’m still not a 100% confident that this was the cause, but for now it looks promising. Have a try and let us know your experience.

Edit: This solution doesn't work!

I’ve got some new findings from Windows process explorer in case anybody knows how to interpret them.

The process bogging the CPU seems to be “System” with PID 4. The critical TID 10536 within this process has a CSwitch Delta of 3469.