BIG spike in activity monitor

L

laurie

Registered
I have noticed a huge spike in activity monitor when checking the cpu. It causes all graphics applications like games etc to slow down every 15 seconds or so. Only problem is I cant seem to see it in the list of actions.
I know its a long shot but can anybody give me some tips on how to locate the problem and perhaps solve it.
 
You could try the command "top" from the terminal (you'll want to make your terminal window bigger). The list can be sorted by CPU usage, so you might be able to pick the problem just watching top next to your activity monitor. If you still can't get it, carefully, and selectively, kill off tasks to see if you can isolate the culprit.
 
Thanks guys. No my desktop pic dosent change. Is this not a normal situation then? Should there be no big spikes in the cpu usage? I have been watching but when the spike happens the numbers at the bottom show that the cpu is 100% used up but there does not seem to be anything showing up in the columns, Only activity monitor and window server thing?
 
What are the specs on your computer and the OS? (Memory, video card, speed, version, etc.) As much information as you can give will help.
 
Im in os 10.3.4 I have 512 ram A ge force mx 2 video card. And its a 700mhz g4 imac. one of the very first,
 
Go to the individual app listings in activity monitor - it will show you which programs are using the most cpu. Same as top, but prettier
 
It sounds as if some background task kicks off on a regular schedule. Typical suspects would be anti-virus utilities, Norton utilities of any kind, too frequent checking for email, etc. Set Activity Monitor to "Active Processes" and "CPU" and you should be able to pick up the culprit, but watch closely it may be on for only a very brief time.
 
Ok I have been running this for a while now and there are 2 things that seem to come up during the spike.
mach-init
notifyd
Sorry I could have a letter out of place. What are these. And would somone be able to run activity monitor on their mac without anything running and tell me what comes up in the active list.
I would be very greatfull.
Thanks for all the help.
Laurie.
 
When I check Activity Monitor with nothing running on my system and nothing else going on active the active Processes are:

pmTool
Activity Monitor (of course)
WindowServer
kernel task

Both mach-init and notifyd are there but they are inactive. Offhand I don't know specifically what these two do, but they are both part of OS X.
 
Thanks. Yours is the same as mine other than the two things I get popping up every 15 secs. Anyone know what they are?
 
Well this is strange. I re installed panther so now im just running 10.3 and the problem is gone!?! Only thing was I lost some of my system in the process, I had to reinstall stuffit and my modem driver and some others. Is there any harm in running this OS?
 
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