100% CPU use on One Core Process mdworker

[darbyclash34]

I've been getting serious CPU spikes with a process called mdworker. Seemingly randomly, it will start using 100% of one core on my Macbook Pro 2.4ghz. This is on OS 10.5.1. Anyone else having this problem?

Shawn

 

[tersono]

100% of one core seems excessive. mdworker is the metadata server process. You'll find it taking a fair amount of CPU power whenever you're either modifying files or mounting volumes.

Unless spotlight is still indexing your drives, however, I wouldn't expect it to be using that much CPU - and certainly not for more than very short periods of time. On my systems it'll occasionally jump up to around 40% usage, but drops back again fairly quickly.

It's worth taking a hard look at what apps you may have running in the background - not only stuff in login items, but software such as anti-virus applications that may have installed kernel extensions or background processes via /Library/StartupItems

 

[00PS]

I am experiencing the same thing, but at when the CPU usage spikes my external HD is in overdrive. Does spotlight index your external HD?

nevermind searched forums

 

[bladerun]

This could be a solution

I am experiencing the same thing, but at when the CPU usage spikes my external HD is in overdrive. Does spotlight index your external HD?

nevermind searched forums

This could be a solution. I tried this and, after a fair amount of time for reindexing, cpu usage is now normal

claudio

http://www.macintouch.com/tiger12.html

 

[andejp12]

Sorry to dig this up from the depths (found using a google search oddly enough) but I wanted to add that when using the rm command to remove anything in the terminal if you want a slight safety net simply remove the f from any -fr commands as the f simply causes the system to use Y as the response to "are you sure that you want to delete this?". Just thought I'd throw the tip out there.

 

[cgreen23]

Are you using DropBox or iDisk?

I noticed that problem pick up the other day when I switched from iDisk to DropBox. It seems worse on DropBox, but now I think of it, it may have been evident with iDisk too.

Both involve frequent syncing, so I'm guessing (I'm no techie) that might cause some of the symptoms mentioned.

 

[arthur55]

Previously mounted and now missing volume could cause mdworker to eat up CPU

I experience a very annoying 26-40% CPU overload (with increasing fan speed) when I forget to mount my Truecrypt volume after reboot. The mdworker indexing process probably starts removing files from its tables (or whatever it uses).

As soon as the old volume gets mounted back again, the mdworker process instantly drops to 0.1-1%, fan stops, overload is gone.

Hope that helps,

Arthur

 

[haskell chap]

mdworker

This is a mysterious process indeed i'm getting cpu overloads of 80-100%, not to start a mac rumor but it could be that new MacKeeper app I installed. It is also worth it to note that it changes its PID it went from 9625 to 14324 in the past 5-15min.