Re: excessive CPU usage (SOLVED)

[Gary Roach <gary719_list1@verizon.net>]

On 09/21/2014 11:54 AM, Gary Roach wrote:
> Hi all
>
> For the last few months I have been plagued by very slow response from 
> my system. As an example, it takes 2 1/2 minutes to drag and drop 80 
> files from my email inbox to the trash bin in icedove. It has taken as 
> high as 5 minutes for iceweasel to load. This problem is not just 
> these packages but also applies to all of the rest of my programs.
>
> I am using Debian Wheezy with a i5750 4 core processor on a fast Intel 
> board. I run a kde desktop. All the software is up to date.
>
> I have checked all of the log files and can't find any anomalies. 
> Rebooting doesn't help.
>
> Using the KDE System Monitor (ksysguard) I have noticed that at least 
> one of the processors goes to 100% and stays there for long periods 
> even though there is no noticeable activity in the process tables. The 
> only other thing I have noticed (the printing just hung up while I am 
> writing this) is that the hard drive indicator comes on and stays on 
> during the processor activity. I ran some checks on the hard drive but 
> found no indication of any hard drive problems.
>
> Has anyone else had a similar problem or have any idea what is going on.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Gary R.
Thanks for all of the help. It was pointed out on a web site I found 
that SMART item 5 - Reallocated_Sector_Cnt - was zero, indicating that 
there was no bad sectors found. Further, all of the logged errors were 
DMA Read / Write errors that occurred very recently. To me, this 
indicated a problem with the drives logic board. I bought an identical 
drive - except a Caviar Black instead of Green -  and used Clonezilla to 
clone the original to the new drive. I had to use the -recover- mode 
because of the errors. It took most of the day but finally completed. I 
unplugged the old drive and rebooted the system. Everything works great. 
The black drive is faster than the green one so the system is even more 
responsive that it was originally.

Thanks again for all of the help. Using SMART works if you can ever 
figure out what all of that cryptic data means.

Gary R.