High CPU usage when connected to university network

[smoth]

My Surface Pro 3's (i5, 8gb ram, Win8.1) fans have been in overdrive lately whenever I am connected to my university's network. CPU usage is at a constant 25-30 percent and my tablet is burning hot. The usage is wrapped into a svchost.exe and momentarily drops whenever i reset the service Windows Management Instrumentation. I do not have this problem when on my home network. Any ideas what could be causing this or how to make it stop? I have ensured that my antivirus software and Windows are updated.

Thanks for the help

 

[Robert17]

Can you post a PS of your Services running from the Tab? It may offer a clue.

 

[smoth]

 

[Robert17]

Is this a personally owned and operated unit or has it been issued to you? I ask because there are a few services that you can either stop or set to 'manual' from the screeny I see. As far as it seemingly only happening at your school, they will be pinging the daylights out of you with refreshes for many reasons: connection status, security protocols, and others to make the most out of their bandwidth. Doesn't explain why your tablet should be hot with the CPU at 30% or so. Do you handle it differently at school? Set it on your lap or an insulator that makes heat dissipation more difficult?

 

[smoth]

It is a personal machine.

At school it is usually set up as a laptop so nothing but air touching it on all sides. At home I usually have it in my lap so that should be worse in terms of cooling.

SpeedFan is reporting that the CPU is running at 52C, and the SSD at 40C. Then there is another temp that is reading 429496448C, so maybe that is causing the fan to freak out. I will have to check this at home and see if it is the same.

 

[Robert17]

52°C is warm at a low load. That tablet isn't dissapating heat very well. I'd suggest a laptop cooler for a quick fix. There are many on the market. Unless it's under warranty so that you can take it in for an inspection, you may need to pop the top off and take a peek, see if there is anything amiss such as a missing heat sink.

 

[Automata]

The computer could be trying to discover other devices on the network. I could see the system running warmer because its trying to process tons of devices on the network.

Switch your network type to "public" and see if the issue stops, or disable network discovery.

 

[grumperfish]

You can also run process explorer and open up svchost inside of the program to see what component is triggering it.

 

[smoth]

It is a Microsoft Surface, so I cannot really add a laptop cooler or take it apart. At home it idles at about 30-32C (1-2% CPU usage).

 

[habbajabba]

I would uninstall adobe (pdfxchange is better). Then disable team viewer, cisco, defender, wmp network sharing, alg, timebroker, windows search, server, office click to run, diagnostics tracking, home group (are you on one?), peer networking (do you use this at all?).
It's obvious you bought it, installed more stuff and payed no attention at all to what it's actually doing.
Plus you should run it with a static ip, dns disabled with a hosts file.
Also, letting anything and everything run at startup and or be an automatic service is a recipe for exactly your issue. For example; every time you turn it on are you using team viewer? Perfect example of what should be set to manual.
Btw, av software is only good if you are infected. Unless you are letting the world use it as well, I suggest removing it.

 

[smoth]

I have been pretty careful about what I have installed and let run at startup. My university requires antivirus to be installed or it wont let you on the network. I also use Team Viewer and Cisco VPN all the time as I monitor my experiments and need to access university software licenses. I also use the Adobe Suite pretty heavily. I have all the software installed on this Surface plus more on my home desktop (i7 920, 6gb ram) and never have any problems so I would not expect a new machine to struggle with just Windows services even though it has 2 cores instead of 4. I have never played with the services on either since the usage has never amounted to anything significant. I will try disabling the few you mentioned.

 

[Mpegger]

The computer could be trying to discover other devices on the network. I could see the system running warmer because its trying to process tons of devices on the network.

Switch your network type to "public" and see if the issue stops, or disable network discovery.

I'd have to agree with thideras. There are alot of network related services that svchost.exe runs, so disabling anything that you don't specifically need to run your programs on the network should help cut down on network traffic.

 

[habbajabba]

Setting stuff to manual startup puts you in control. Also, I know that windows has a ton of bs in Task scheduler that is hidden. Windows 8 Mgr can reveal and disable any or all of it though it's not free. I would also suggest turning windows updates to disabled and only turning it on when you feel like it and running it manually. There are great alternatives to the windows search also. I use Locate32 personally. I would stop that for sure.

As for av and your uni, does this include cellphones? And what's to prevent you from stopping stuff. It will still be installed, just not running. And last but not least, Tiny Wall is a great free frontend for the windows firewall.
God Bless with the studying.