theres a process i cant see in activity monitor but i can see in istat sucking my cpu and i dont know how to get rid of it.

What makes you think there's an "invisible process"? There is no such thing.
i posted a screenshot. theres a process that istat can see taking up 100% cpu that doesnt appear in activity monitor. thats all i meant by invisible.
You need to expand the window to show the entire process name. Then you need to sort Activity Monitor by process name, not process ID. That would make it easier to find.
You can double-click on the name in iStat to highlight it, then Command-C to copy. Then paste here or in TextEdit to get the full name.the screenshot doesnt show it, but there is no process by that name in the list. and none with a remotely high enough cpu%. also i dont think theres a way to expand that section of istat enough to get the full name.
One of these, perhaps?I must be missing something, because double clicking doesnt do anything.
on a side note, i downloaded istat menus and the process has another name there "mdns". but that name isnt in activity monitor either.
Not likely, since none exist that run on current Mac OS X. Mac Virus/Malware InfoSurely, not a virus of some sort?
Before you go to that extreme, try repairing permissions and rebooting.I am wondering whether I should go nuclear and reinstall the OS.
You're right. I missed that. Since my brain has gone to sleep, I guess I should, too!^^ He said he already did that.
^^ He said he already did that.
Anyway, have you tried using in Terminal.app, running either "ps -A" or "top"? These both give current processes.
^^ He said he already did that.
Anyway, have you tried using in Terminal.app, running either "ps -A" or "top"? These both give current processes.
top did nothing but ps -A gave back the following: (in addition to some other stuff. this is the interesting part)
193 ?? 0:00.39 /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Fram
677 ?? 0:10.86 /usr/sbin/cupsd -l
678 ?? 15:35.25 mdns://4C9A6DE5-4C9A-6DE5-4C9A-6DE54C9A6DE5 158 andy s
707 ?? 0:01.90 /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit -ps
711 ?? 0:00.20 /System/Library/Services/AppleSpell.service/Contents/M
so how do i stop it?
Better yet: ps -A | grep 4C9A
This will also give you the full command line.
There are no viruses for Macs in the canonical sense of the word, may I tell you, but Trojans and rootkits are sure as hell to exist, spreading via social engineering.
678 ?? 22:13.72 mdns://4C9A6DE5-4C9A-6DE5-4C9A-6DE54C9A6DE5 158 andy smbprn.00000001 Microsoft Word - MO INFORMED CONSENT FOR VOLUNTEERS Application-1 1 job-originating-host-name=192.168.1.105 job-uuid=urn:uuid:110fd65f-be96-39a5-50b8-2d54691fe9cb /private/var/spool/cups/d00158-001
So! Are you printing a file over the network, actually?
this looks like a file my roommate tried to print.. but i have no idea where to go from here
1. Go to your printing queue and remove the job from it. By the way, did you know that buggy printer drivers can cause 100% CPU? If you don't see it, point your browser to http://localhost:631/, go to Jobs and delete it.
2. Go to your roommate and slap him with a large clue-by-four. Should help.
jafd, you are DA MAN (or woman?)
As you suggested, I had to go to http://localhost:631/jobs/ to kill the test page (there was nothing in the print queue) but killed it successfully and now all is back to normal.
Thanks everybody for all the help. Man, I love the interwebs...
Next thing to google up is what your printer is and are its drivers reported to be crap these days.