Comments on: Winlogon.exe at 50% or 100% CPU (Fix)

By: Brian Hinton

Brian Hinton — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:59:21 +0000

This also worked for me, however, if xp doesnt show the CSC folder even though you show hidden files, just type it in and it will go to the directory. C:\Windows\CSC

By: Alan

Alan — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 00:35:27 +0000

Glad this helped. One suggestion: unless it’s a PC that’s disconnected from the ‘net completely, I’d strongly recommend updating to SP3. Support for SP2 (including security fixes) stopped some time ago.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:42:41 +0000

Thanks, this really helped. Winlogon.exe was at 45% of CPU. We do use offline files so I went into Offline Files tab in Windows Explorer Folder Options and deleted all files. It went down to 22%, but it could not delete one file which was in use. I turned offline files off and WinLogon.exe CPU went to 0%. I turned it back on and it stayed at 0%. (This was XP SP2.)

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:31:20 +0000

Kevin:

If you don’t see the c:\Windows\CSC directory, it could be hidden. Just enable hidden files & folders.

By: Kevin Gooder

Kevin Gooder — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 10:44:00 +0000

I do not see a windows/CSC directory on my windows XP home edition operating system. I have the winlogon.exe file chewing up my cpu time. Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Kevin

By: steve

steve — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:55:44 +0000

Awesome – it works!!
Been having problems for ages!

By: Alan

Alan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:25:20 +0000

Glad it was helpful. I expect to do either a more in-depth article or at least a collection of links on ways to track down problems like this. The Sysinternals folks, forums and tools (now at Microsoft) are probably the best place to start for tracking down problems like this.

By: Viebie

Viebie — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:25:23 +0000

Thank you Alan, you are a genius!

By: Isaac

Isaac — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:19:08 +0000

WOW thank you for the post (and for Google for finding this post).
I have been banging my head against the wall removing hardware, MSIE and any component I have installed recently.
This really did the trick.
Thanks!

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:25:18 +0000

Based on other things I’ve seen, this error may not require that a PC be on the domain but it is likely to only happen when users are using traditional logins (Ctrl-Alt-Del, enter their username and password) because Offline Files is not compatible with Fast User Switching (where you click on a list of users on the Welcome screen).