Help my CPU is running at 95%

**dburg** · July 3rd, 2006, 04:55 PM

Hi
I have a G4 Powerbook running 10.3.9 and the machine runs ever when it is sleeping. The activity monitor show that my CPU (the finder value) is at 95%!!!
I have tried
Diskwarrior
reinstalling OX 10.3.9
and Nortan antivirus
has anyone got a suggestion?
diana

**sinclair_tm** · July 3rd, 2006, 05:11 PM

open your activity monitor in the utilities folder and see what the name of the process that is using the cpu the most. let us know, and that will tell us how to proceed.

**dburg** · July 3rd, 2006, 05:14 PM

the finder is running at anywhere from 55% to 95%
thanks
diana

**camgangrel21** · July 3rd, 2006, 06:30 PM

do you have any menu items in the Finder's menu that is not part of the OS one that come when you first set up the mac. I know that I have MenuMeters runing on my G3 PowerBook runing 10.4.7 and ir runs at right about 5 to as much as 50%. Now what you might try is runing Cocktail. Because ever so often my CPU loads hit as high as 8.8 load. When it hits this high I just kick in Cocktail in and then have it run and then reset my system when back up loads back to below 1. hope that helps.

**barhar** · July 3rd, 2006, 07:12 PM

Only Apple provides 'Finder's menus; the menus listed along the right side of the menu bar (whether 'Finder' is the front most process or not) are not 'Finder' specific, and are managed by 'SystemUIServer'.

'I just kick in Cocktail in and then have it run and then reset my system' - 'Cocktail' has nothing to do with 'SystemUIServer's handling of Apple's and third party's (right side) menu bar menus.

However, using 'Cocktail' to clear 'System' and 'User' caches, and deleting all rotated log files - via the utility's 'Files' toolbar menu item button icon; and then manually trashing any large '.log' and other files in the '/Library/Logs/' and '~/Library/logs/' folder's sub-folders - before rebooting (restarting) the Mac, may be a possible solution.

---

My condolences on your installation and use of 'Norton Anti-virus'.

**lbj** · July 3rd, 2006, 08:58 PM

I'm on an iMac G5 running 10.3.9. The culprit on my machine is some root process called "lookupd".

You can launch Activity Monitor to confirm, then quit the process from within Activity Monitor. Saves from rebooting the system.

**carman** · July 3rd, 2006, 09:39 PM

open terminal
run : top -o cpu

this will show cpu intensive jobs on top.

**Satcomer** · July 3rd, 2006, 10:00 PM

If I remember right (when i had 10.3.9) the bug was fixed in Tiger. The lookupd has to do with logging and such.

I found a post at Macintouch that seems to fix a similar problem.

Originally Posted by Steve Klein

Like many other users, I've had problems with the spinning ball in Safari. Activity monitor showed it was eating up 80% of my CPU.
When I first noticed it, I'd sometimes have to wait 10 seconds for the spinning ball to go away. And with each passing day, it seemed to take longer -- eventually it got up to 30 seconds. What was worse, while the problem had originally only affected my home Mac, it soon started happening on my Mac at work, too. And then a coworker's Mac as well.
I *finally* tracked down the problem. Deleting this file fixed it: ~/Library/Safari/Form Values
You can also delete this file like this: Safari -> Preferences -> Autofill -> Other forms -> Edit -> Remove All
What caused it? I recently started playing a game called Sudoku at this website: http://www.websudoku.com/
Every game counted as a unique form, and Safari was storing all the values for every game. Deleting the stored form values fixed the problem on all three computers.