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I have unusually high Kernel time on my CPUs as shown in task manager.

What are some ways I can troubleshoot this?

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4 Answers 4

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The definitive tool for finding out exactly what is using kernel time is kernrate.exe. It comes with the Windows SDK/WDK Visual Studio, etc.

Also Xperf can do the same kernel polling/tracing as well... and is probably a lot easier to use. Kernrate was kind of a beast.

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This is probably easier than you think. If you have consistent, high system usage, Process Explorer provides a Threads tab that you can use for the System process (process id: 4). The offending module and function should be displayed.

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If you need a formal tool for collecting the empirical data to analyze the issue, you may use the Windows Performance Recorder/Windows Performance Analyzer, part of the Windows Performance Toolkit.

https://blogs.technet.com/b/yongrhee/archive/2012/11/23/installing-the-windows-performance-toolkit-v5-0-wprui-wpr-xperf.aspx

https://blogs.technet.com/b/yongrhee/archive/2012/11/23/wpr-xperf-capture-high-cpu-disk-i-o-file-registry-networking-private-bytes-virtual-bytes-paged-pool-nonpaged-pool-and-or-application-slowness.aspx

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I had the issue myself with high kernel times consuming 50% of CPU, while other processes accounted for the remaining 40%. The issue was caused by not properly disabling and uninstalling Trend AV.

Even though the services were stopped, and the realtime scan disabled, kernel mini filters appeared to be enabled. I deduced that they were consuming kernel time after I unstalled the software properly and observed that the kernel time reduced to 1/10th of the previous load.

To view the list of filters on your system, type

C:\Users\TEMP>fltmc filters
Filter Name                     Num Instances    Altitude    Frame
------------------------------  -------------  ------------  -----
TmPreFilter                             3       328500         0
luafv                                   1       135000         0

Microsoft has a list of 3rd party filters available here. According to that spreadsheet, TmPreFilter is Trend Micro, an AV Scanner.

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    Awww I'm really disappointed by this answer. After the build up I was expecting a beautifully crafted expose on how to troubleshoot high kernel time. Instead you skip all the interesting bits (the how) and present us with one you made earlier :( What steps did you take to get to this conclusion without them you're not really answering the question posed.
    – user9517
    Mar 4, 2013 at 15:15
  • @Iain Haha, thanks. My goal here was to share the information that I knew in the SE hybrid blog-wiki format (I don't have a blog or know of a suitable wiki). I really don't know how to troubleshoot kernel time, but discovered something that worked and wanted to share it. I can definitely answer questions that are about Email, Security, and some Development. It's a partial answer Mar 4, 2013 at 15:27
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    Geat answer, I did not know about fltmc.
    – jftuga
    Mar 4, 2013 at 19:52
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Have a nose using Process Monitor and DiskMon (Microsoft SysInternals) to see what the machine is doing. One common culprit, aside from dodgy device drivers, is good old paging.

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