Help 100% CPU usage, but it doesn't add up

[Mr. Ed]

I am also rooted, rooting would have no influence on the 4G service or device. People have reported the 4G lag on both rooted and unrooted ROMs.

Did I misread or did you?
You mentioned above that you are using a rom with the most currrent leaked htc update correct? And that you haven't been able to recreate the lag since?

 

[Vincent Law]

Did I misread or did you?
You mentioned above that you are using a rom with the most currrent leaked htc update correct? And that you haven't been able to recreate the lag since?

Yes. That has nothing to do with rooting. I was rooted beforehand as well, and it had the issue. People who are not rooted have the issue too.

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

Palmetto are you rooted?

I am not rooted.

I however seem to be able to recreate this occurance often. If it wasn't very often, I probably wouldn't have a thread about it or at least there wouldn't be as many entries in this thread.

Today, I'll also go to the same place where it happened yesterday to see if that tower helps things along. How likely is it that I'll be on the same 4G tower if I go back to that same spot?

Also, I am not necessarily concerned with the cause. I only care about the cure at this time. What can I do aside from rebooting? Is there a service I can stop that would gain control back? An even better question would be why does the Android operating system allow something like this to happen?

After a point in time, the OS should be able to say...wait a sec, this isn't proper behavior. I'll stop this at once. Why doesn't that happen?

 

[Mr. Ed]

Alright guys I am leaving this one alone. Palmetto...vincent said above he flashed a rom and had not been able to recreate it. I was not referring to you (palmetto) not being able to recreate it. The reference to root was not in any way shape or form being used to diagnose the problem. It was a background question to validate possible solutions ie flashing a rom with the leaked update

Vincent...get over yourself. You are so he'll bent on starting crap that you fail to see the point of the post.


Palmetto...I wish you the best of luck on the issue!

 

[Vincent Law]

First off, I'm going to ignore Ed's post, since he's been trolling me for quite a while the past day or so. It's counter productive.

I am not rooted.

I however seem to be able to recreate this occurance often. If it wasn't very often, I probably wouldn't have a thread about it or at least there wouldn't be as many entries in this thread.

Today, I'll also go to the same place where it happened yesterday to see if that tower helps things along. How likely is it that I'll be on the same 4G tower if I go back to that same spot?

Also, I am not necessarily concerned with the cause. I only care about the cure at this time. What can I do aside from rebooting? Is there a service I can stop that would gain control back? An even better question would be why does the Android operating system allow something like this to happen?

After a point in time, the OS should be able to say...wait a sec, this isn't proper behavior. I'll stop this at once. Why doesn't that happen?

Why the Android system allows an I/O situation like this to occur? Probably because it has no way of telling between an out-of-control process and one that is simply doing a lot of processing. After all, you wouldn't want, say, a large excel file in Docs2Go to be killed off while loading for creating a similar situation. Again, I don't know enough of the underlying OS to say for sure, but it's one possibility.

Aside from rebooting, I had no solution back when I had the issue. As annoying as it may seem, perhaps you might try rooting your device and installing the leaked ROM like I did? With a proper NAND backup (which you perform before installing the leaked ROM), there's no risk involved, so if something is wrong with the leaked ROM you can always roll back.

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

perhaps you might try rooting your device and installing the leaked ROM like I did? With a proper NAND backup (which you perform before installing the leaked ROM), there's no risk involved, so if something is wrong with the leaked ROM you can always roll back.

I have a lot of rooting to read up on before I go that route. I'll ask you some questions offline through IM about that.

Is the leaked ROM leaked by HTC? In other words, is this going to be the next OTA from HTC for the EVO?

 

[Vincent Law]

I have a lot of rooting to read up on before I go that route. I'll ask you some questions offline through IM about that.

Is the leaked ROM leaked by HTC? In other words, is this going to be the next OTA from HTC for the EVO?

Supposedly, yes it is. Since it's a leak though, nothing's guaranteed, it may not be the final release version. Of course, should such a final release differ, you can always install that too when it arrives.

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

Supposedly, yes it is. Since it's a leak though, nothing's guaranteed, it may not be the final release version. Of course, should such a final release differ, you can always install that too when it arrives.

Does it seem like this will be released OTA? Could it be released prior to Android 3.0? Or would they hold off and lump the two things together?

 

[Vincent Law]

Android 3.0? Haha, no, we're not going to see that for a loooong time. Even if this isn't the final version of the next update, the next update won't be different, just more bug fixes. I would be SHOCKED if we see the next version of Android before March from HTC, and that's assuming we see it at all (they've made no promises to anything after Froyo).

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

It happened again this morning while I was going to work streaming Pandora over 4G. It was in a whole different part of town too. I've come to notice that everytime I am using 4G, my CPU use jumps up to 100% while transferring data, and then it falls back to idle once finished. This is how it behaves when it's not messed up.

During one of those peaks to 100% usage though, it decides to stay at 100%, and never come back down. All day yesterday, I waited and waited for it to happen. On at least 25 different occassions, I saw it peak to 100%, but it came back down each time. This morning, it happened real soon after I got within 4G range. It went to 100%, but never came back down...I had to reboot like normal.



You'd think that if this was a widespread issue, there would be a lot more noise about it. Could I have a bad device? Could this only affect SOME devices? It's hard for me to believe that there could be something inherent to all EVOs...else there would be many threads like mine.

 

[Vincent Law]

I think the reason it's not widespread is very few people actually are using 4G currently. And since the issue only seemed to crop up with the latest official ROM update, it hasn't been around long. I still haven't had it happen on my phone since updating to the leaked one though, so I doubt it's a bad device. Just bad code.

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

I think the reason it's not widespread is very few people actually are using 4G currently. And since the issue only seemed to crop up with the latest official ROM update, it hasn't been around long. I still haven't had it happen on my phone since updating to the leaked one though, so I doubt it's a bad device. Just bad code.

I didn't realize that this just happened. I went to another forum and found people with this same issue. Someone there mentioned it happening while he was on 2.1.

I've only had my EVO since about the beginning of October. I know the FPS cap was lifted by some HTC update...but I don't really have a chronological order in my head of when all these things happened.

Was it the update with the FPS limit lift that allegedly caused this issue?

 

[ChrisMuzz]

Posted this on another thread, just trying to get some resolution.

Same problem EVO Android 2.2 non rooted using HTC toggle
The lag is terrible, almost to the point of locking my phone up, and continues to a lesser degree even when 4G is turned off.. in Washington DC with supposedly good 4G coverage.

So I pay an extra $10 a month for a service that makes my handset work worse? That doesn't make any sense.

 

[asperry1]

I experience the same issues on a non-rooted stock rom 2.2. Doesn't matter what applications I'm using. I'm in DC with good 4G coverage, happens with 4 bars or 1 bar. The entire phone gets very sluggish, it delays when pressing buttons, it delays when swapping home screens. When I turn off 4G it instantly stops lagging.

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

I experience the same issues on a non-rooted stock rom 2.2. Doesn't matter what applications I'm using. I'm in DC with good 4G coverage, happens with 4 bars or 1 bar. The entire phone gets very sluggish, it delays when pressing buttons, it delays when swapping home screens. When I turn off 4G it instantly stops lagging.

I only wish turning off 4G fixed it for my phone.

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

This just happened again to my phone, but this time, I wasn't using 4G. It really freaked me out too.

I happened to be running the OTA updates from settings---system updates

I went to click on Update Profile (which takes a LOOOONG time using the 3G in my office due to speed) and set the phone down. I picked it up 20 minutes later after it went into screen lock mode, and the CPU was at 100%.

Upon investigating this, I observed 100% CPU usage, but no account of which task was using it (total itemized tasks accounted for only 30% usage). This is the same behavior I get when the 4G bug hits.

So perhaps my SPECIFIC issue is different from the 4G bug in general. Whatever I/O Wait condition that is brought on by the 4G bug affects my phone when in 3G as well. I am going to do a factory reset, and then rebuild my phone before I call Sprint about this. If it keeps happening, then I will surely call them.

 

[photocycle]

I have 4G where I'm at and yes I get the problem with 4G + Lag also. Let us know what sprint says.

EDIT: I am rooted with stock ROM 2.2 Froyo.

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

It happened again today, and I even used the settings menu to turn 4G on instead of a widget. I am also noticing a trend. I can use my 4G for the rest of the day because I rebooted the phone this morning. Tomorrow, I bet it will fail again. I've been noticing that I can usually get at least 24 hours before it happens again.

This may sound like a stupid question, but does Android OS deteriorate throughout the day like an older Windows machine would? by this, I mean why can I run 4G for a whole day (usually right after a reboot) and then have it fail on me VERY regularly the next day. It's almost as if something gets corrupted throughout the day of having the OS running.

Lately, if I wait a day or more to turn on 4G, it usually fails on me immediately after enabling it.

But in the end, no two days are ever the same with this issue. I am simply drawing generalizations from my experiences.

 

[marctronixx]

the Android OS does NOT deteriorate over the course of the day. now if a program has a memory leak (you remember those from the win mo days!) this will cause the phone to crawl...

 

[Palmetto Fellow]

Newest Update


I did a factory reset on my phone on 11-20-10, and have not experienced 4G lag since I did this. However, I have not spent as much time in 4G spots given the Holiday season.

Today is my first day back at work, and I should know by the end of the week if I still have a lag issue.

An interesting note:

This morning right after I left home, I turned off my WiFi and the phone went to 3G. The 4G was completely off, I double checked this...but I got 100% CPU usage. I stopped using Pandora, and waited to see if the CPU dropped, but it didn't.

It was behaving the same as before...where the CPU use is 100%, but when you drill into the stats, it doesn't account for the usage. I used System Panel Lite to end all background tasks, and the lag immediately went away. I wonder if this is something new...

 

[beanfield]

Wow...glad to see I'm not the only one. I have very similar symptoms a phone that's never been rooted or had an unofficial Rom applied. I leave 4g enabled 24/7 and get almost constant coverage. Been searching high and low for other users with the same problem and a solution. http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-support-troubleshooting/232220-random-high-iowait.html

I've also tried doing a factory reset to no avail. Even tried formatting my sdcard thinking it may have gone bad and a program was trying to access it in the background. Perhaps can one of you guys with a rooted phone follow the first link in my thread regarding echoing a character into block_dump under proc to get more details on which pids are doing most of the io?

Linux Laptop Mode and /proc block_dump - Dean Wilson@UnixDaemon: In search of (a) life

Should start logging to /proc/kmesg.

Sorry for the brevity....posting from my phone.

 

[Drew5150]

so I have also had this problem. I first noticed it as battery drain.

I use system panel to monitor my phone and found cpu at 100% even after a reboot. my monitor found that the system process "suspend" to be running.

searching for suspend led me know where. it seems it can get stuck on for various reason on different android phones. but it seems to be linked to 4g on the evo.

someone linked me to this thread Evo Battery Tips and Explanations **Updated 12-4-10** - xda-developers section 1 talks about the 4g issue.

it says not to use any on screen toggle and only activate through settings. also it says you should reboot your phone after every 4g use.

I was able to verify this to be my issue. I was using a 4G toggle from switch pro. I removed the 4g toggle from from my home screen(4g was off at the time) and rebooted. still had cpu at 100% so I went into network settings and cycled "mobile data always on" off and on and my cpu then dropped down.

now after using this toggle I tried to activate 4g and it would not connect through settings. I tried a different toggle and it would not connect. so I put my original toggle back on and turned 4g on, it worked!! so leaving 4g on I removed the toggle from my screen. went into settings and turned off 4g and then rebooted my phone.

4g now works when activating it through settings. so there is definately something going on when using a toggle. for me I just won't use the toggle anymore.

I know rebooting is a pain, but if you are rooted you can find a widget that can reboot your phone with a touch of the screen - no pressing the power button at all. I use one from switch pro.

I am also experimenting with a setting to see if I can get this to happen anymore. so far so good, but its only been 5 days. I will also be trying to use my old toggle with this setting and see what happens.

try this "settings - wireless & networks - 4g settings" uncheck "network notification" 4g must be on to change this setting. no idea if this will change anything, but I figure with this off and "mobile data always on" unchecked then hopefully the phone won't search for 4g all the time.

 

[namkoong80]

I have the exact same problem.

The phone will be running all smooth and fast, and then boom! It suddenly becomes SO slow that I can't do anything with it. (Sometimes it freezes and I can't even turn off the phone and I had to pull out the battery.) When I try to hit the home or menu button the phone would just vibrate and not take me anywhere (even when it is on ring tone mode).

This started happening four days ago all of a sudden, and ever since then whenever I try to use my phone for maybe like 5 minutes this will happen EVERY SINGLE TIME. I've been restarting my phone and pulling out my battery like 10 times a day. It's crazy.

I barely managed to get to the system manager when my phone slowed down again, and the memory was fine, but the cpu was 100%, which didn't add up! If it did add up I should only see maybe 5-10%. So there's something hidden that's using up 90% of my CPU. Once this happens, it's over. I can't do anything but restart to make it work again. Killing apps wouldn't do any good.

I wasn't using 4G before, and then I started using 4G a week ago. At first it was fine, and then this started happening. I saw similar posts about the effect of using 4G, so i completely turned it off. Even then the problem will not go away AT ALL. So I am now doubting that it is a 4G problem.

It's impossible to track the cause of the problem. It seems completely random because it would happen when I am using any app really. It does seem like it happens when I making any "sudden" changes, whatever that means. For example, when I am plugging/unplugging the charger, when I am installing an app, etc.. But it also happens out of nowhere, too... So I really don't know.

I think I tried nearly everything people have been suggesting me to do (other than a hard reset). I was just wondering if anyone here finally solved their problem?

 

[namkoong80]

Problem solved. After a week of struggling I finally figured it out. My Evo is back to it's normal condition. Slick and fast as new (I owned it for 7 months now). It was some combination of bluetooth (i was using android desktop notifier) and 4G. Once I turned off the bluetooh everything went back to normal, even with 4G. No lagging since.