Troubleshooting: Tracking High CPU Usage

How to Identify and Resolve High CPU Usage Issues

Issue:

On rare occasions, people have reported an issue where CPU usage on the EveryonePrint server reached close to 100%. In such cases, log files may not be sufficient to track down the root cause of the issue. More in-depth tracking of running processes and file handles is then necessary.

Solution:

Process Explorer Tool

• Download Sysinternal Process Explorer from the Microsoft site at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
• Unzip content to C:\
• You can create a shortcut to launch Process Explorer at startup: on Windows 2012, click Start and enter "shell:StartUp"
• Setup shortcut properties with /t (start minimized) and /e (start elevated), as shown in the screenshot below.
  
• Setup Process Explorer Options: Allow Only One Instance.
  
• Setup Process Explorer View: Show Process Tree / Show Lower Pane -> Handles
  
  
  

Using Process Explorer:

• Using Process Explorer to identify EveryonePrint Web service in normal operation.
  
• Using Process Explorer to track a process using high-CPU; here, cpp.exe is using 30% + CPU, and we can identify the file currently being printed.
  

With this information, it is now possible for us to analyze the log files, track down the origin of the file being printed, grab a copy (when EveryonePrint is set up for 'DebugKeepFiles), perform debugging in our lab, etc.