Audacity suddenly spiking to 100% cpu when opening a file.

I have this weird problem. I’ve been using Audacity for about a year now and haven’t had this problem. When I go to file and click open; Audacity spikes to 100% CPU usage. This didn’t happen before.

My PC:
CPU: i5 3570k @ 3.6ghz(4 cores)
GPU: HD 7850
OS: Windows 7

I’m a musician and I was going to use Audacity for mixing. But I can’t use it if this 100% CPU thing doesn’t stop.

On all 4 cores?
What sort of file are you trying to open?
Is it just a momentary spike?

I would describe it like this. I go to file; I click open and then when the folder opens it spikes to 100% cpu on all 4 cores. So this happens before I actually open a file. And it’s not just a momentary spike either. It goes to 100% until I close Audacity. Very weird.

Yes, very weird, especially as Audacity only runs on one processor. (there is a feature request to make it multi-processor capable, but we don’t have that yet).

Some possibilities that come to mind:

  • If you are opening a file that is not natively supported by Audacity, then Audacity will be using a decoder that is on your system, which could perhaps be using multiple processors. (You didn’t say what kind of file you are trying to open).

  • Your security software is kicking in and analyzing Audacity and/or the temporary data files that Audacity uses. Until ruled out I suspect that this is the most likely cause.

  • You are not using genuine Audacity but have inadvertently downloaded a modified version of Audacity (which we obviously cannot guarantee will work correctly or be malware free).

Don’t know if this helps or not; but I narrowed down what’s causing the CPU Spike using Process Explorer.

There are 4 instances of “ntdll.dll!TpCallbackIndependent=0x238” each using 25% of the CPU.

Not sure if that helps; but at least I know what .dll is causing the spike.

That’s part of the Windows operating system.

Have you run a full in-depth virus scan recently? If not, then it may be a good idea to do so at your earliest convenience.