How to fix high CPU usage from a background process
Jul 03, 2025 am 12:01 AMFirst, confirm the high CPU occupancy process, open the task manager to view the "CPU" tab; secondly, search the process name to determine whether it is a system or a third-party program; try to end non-critical processes, close unnecessary browser tags or plug-ins; update drivers and system patches; close unnecessary startup items; use professional tools to further analyze. The above steps can usually effectively solve the problem of computer lag.
The computer suddenly became stuck and the fan was spinning wildly. When the task manager looked at it, he found that a background process occupied most of the CPU. This situation is quite common and annoying. It is actually not difficult to solve this problem. The key is to find the root cause and then deal with it.

Check which process is "stolen"
First, open the Task Manager (Ctrl Shift Esc for Windows, Activity Monitor for Mac), switch to the "CPU" tab page, and see which processes occupy a particularly high occupancy. Some are built on the system, such as Windows "Windows Explorer" or "Antimalware Service", while others are secretly working with third-party software.

Don't rush to restart or kill the process at this time. Write down the name first and search online for what the process is from. For example, if you see that "svchost.exe" has a high occupancy, it is actually the result of multiple system services running together, and problems may occur when you end it directly.
Several common situations:

- System update background download
- Antivirus software scanning
- Browser multiple tabs are stuck
- Some driver exceptions
Try to terminate or restart the relevant program
If you confirm that this process can end safely, right-click and select "End Task" to try. Note that some system processes will automatically restart after they are finished, or some functions will temporarily fail.
If it is a browser problem, such as Chrome has opened too many tabs and one of the web pages is stuck, you can try to close or refresh one by one. In addition, extension plug-ins sometimes secretly eat CPU resources. You can enter the browser settings to disable some non-essential extensions to see if there is any improvement.
For third-party software, you can try to restart after exiting, or uninstall and reinstall. If a bunch of background services are automatically started every time you boot, you can use msconfig or the "Start" tab in the task manager to turn off unnecessary startup items.
Update driver or system patch
Sometimes high CPU usage is due to bugs in drivers, especially hardware such as graphics cards and network cards that are easy to interact with the system. Go to the official website to download the latest driver update, which may solve the problem.
The Windows system itself can also fix similar issues through updates. Go to "Settings → Update & Security" to check whether there are uninstalled patches. Mac users can update the system through the App Store.
If this problem begins to occur after just installing a new software or driver, you can consider rolling back to the previous state and try using the system restore point or time machine backup and restore.
What if I still can't handle it?
If you really can't find the reason, you can try the following methods:
- Restart the computer and see if it's just a temporary problem
- Scan the virus, some malware will secretly mine or upload data in the background
- Consider replacing lightweight alternative software, such as a more resource-saving browser
- Use professional tools such as Process Explorer to deeply analyze specific process sources
Basically these are the methods. In most cases, checking the process source and cleaning the background program properly can alleviate or even completely solve the problem of high CPU usage.
The above is the detailed content of How to fix high CPU usage from a background process. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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