Vscode: 1 CPU: Visual Studio Code 100% CPU and System freeze on startup win 7 64 bit

[ParikshitBhagawati]

I have a windows 7 64bit PC running on an AMD processor with on board NVIDIA graphics chipset and 8 gb of RAM. I have tried various versions of vs code but the result is the same. It freezes the system for about 2 minutes until it opens it with a 100% CPU usage.

I have also tried different options like disable GPU and running without extentions etc. but all in vain.

I have an older laptop with 1gig RAM and windows 7 32 bit where vs code 1.1 runs without any of the above issues smoothly.

Can you please help ?

• VSCode Version: 1.1 tot 1.16
• OS Version: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open visual studio code
2. System freeze and 100% CPU

Reproduces without extensions: Yes

[alexdima]

@ParikshitBhagawati VS Code uses multiple processes. Maybe it could help us figure out what's going on if we could find out which process is using 100% CPU. You can use a tool like process explorer and hover over the process that is at 100% CPU so we can find out the arguments it is launched with (i.e. identify which of our processes it is)

[ParikshitBhagawati]

@alexandrudima thanks for your response. attached is the screenshot from process explorer. please let me know if this help you with the info you were looking for.
p.s - using the insiders build now.

[ParikshitBhagawati]

Here's more from today!

[alexdima]

I haven't seen so far our main process going crazy like this.

[bpasero]

Can you try to reproduce with our nightly insider builds? You can give our preview releases a try from: http://code.visualstudio.com/Download#insiders

[ParikshitBhagawati]

Well, the profile sent before was with the insiders build (Version 1.17.0). The link you provided however takes me to the download page for the latest stable build I guess, which is 1.16.1. But I downloaded it anyway with no change in results (100% CPU, unresponsive system etc.) and took 10 minutes to open.

Attached is the profile snapshot with the latest build.

Thanks!

[bpasero]

@ParikshitBhagawati is this a single CPU VM?

[ParikshitBhagawati]

Its not a VM.. It's a native single core processor.

[bpasero]

Yeah. VS Code does not run well on 1-CPU systems. This is a known issue that was reported before.

[ParikshitBhagawati]

So is there a fix /work around for this yet or planned in the future ? Or it just wont work ?

[vaibhavsingh97]

I also facing same issue. After launching visual studio, RAM become 100% and my desktop freezes
OS: Arch Linux
Kernel: 4.13.4-1-ARCH

[ahumeniy]

In Windows you can launch VS Code with low or below normal CPU priority and it won't freeze your machine. If you're already affected you can open task manager and set the priority for the processes using 100% CPU to either low or below normal priority. After a while the high CPU usage will stop.

[royBrocken]

I changed my win7 VM to use multiple processors, and vscode is running fine again.

[lbertolotti]

My system is not freezing, but it almost did.

• VS code version 1.9.1 Architecture x64
• OS version: Windows 10 Home
• Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40GHz 2.40 GHz
• Installed memory(RAM): 4.00 GB (3.89 GB usable)
• System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-base processor
• memtest 86+ no errors found.

[ParikshitBhagawati]

As mentioned by @bpasero VS code doesn’t work well with single core CPUs. I had an option to enable multiple cores for my processor and when I did, Code started to work fine without the system freeze / 100% CPU issue.

[9chu]

Meet the same issue on Windows Server 2012 (VM, 1 core cpu).

Kill the high CPU usage process solves the problem.

Update:
There is the details via the --status command.

Version: Code 1.21.0 (9a199d77c82fcb82f39c68bb33c614af01c111ba, 2018-03
-07T11:04:09.969Z)
OS Version: Windows_NT x64 6.3.9600
CPUs: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-26xx v4 (1 x 2394)
Memory (System): 2.00GB (0.55GB free)
VM: 0%
Screen Reader: no
Process Argv: C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\Code.exe

CPU % Mem MB PID Process
0 123 3352 code main
0 82 3248 window (undefined)
97 46 3624 shared-process
0 204 4168 window
0 9 3696 electron-crash-reporter
0 60 3980 extensionHost
0 32 1460 electron_node jsonServerMain.js
0 60 2780 electron_node electronForkStart.js tsserver.js
0 30 3496 electron_node typingsInstaller.js tsserver.js t
ypesMap.js
0 49 4304 electron_node htmlServerMain.js
0 9 5056 watcherService
0 4 3752 console-window-host (Windows internal process)

[jcontradiction]

I no longer have this issue with version 1.21.

[eselje]

I'm still having this issue with 1.21 on an AWS t2.micro. Upsizing to t2.medium.

[johnsonz]

Same problem.

VS code: 1.20.1
OS: Win server 2012 R2

[ssteinerx]

Downloading an update in the background pegs the (a) CPU at 100%+ for me. Always has, still does.

[Nhoya]

Same problem here, ArchLinux 4 core, latest vscode version

[philpalmieri]

Same here, i7 quad core with Ubuntu 18.04

[samwei12]

Same problem here, Windows10 12 core, latest vscode version

[mortenseifert]

I experience the same problem

OS Name:                   Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
OS Version:                6.3.9600 N/A Build 9600
OS Manufacturer:           Microsoft Corporation
OS Configuration:          Member Server
OS Build Type:             Multiprocessor Free
Registered Owner:          Windows User
Registered Organization:
Product ID:                00252-60272-42486-AA665
Original Install Date:     24-10-2017, 09:35:44
System Boot Time:          02-05-2018, 14:30:53
System Manufacturer:       VMware, Inc.
System Model:              VMware Virtual Platform
System Type:               x64-based PC
Processor(s):              1 Processor(s) Installed.

[viniciusgati]

same

[thanhdevapp]

I experience the same problem

[scasic]

same here, linux mint 18.1
when I close VSCode its process still remains in processes list (100%). Have to kill it manually

[DFineNormal]

Same problem here. Workaround for now appears to be to reduce Code.exe process priority to Below Normal, otherwise it's a good 10 mins to open and various actions cause it to freeze again after that.

Same issue on multiple Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 VMs, all with dual vCPUs and various versions of VS code, currently 1.23.1.

[pavelloz]

Problem also happens on VS 1.24.1 @ OSX 10.12.6

[santi95]

Same, switching to Sublime... took my cpu to 85C, not even gaming does that...

[TBubba]

I had the same issue on my garbage single core CPU laptop, but changing the priority of the process to "Below Normal" makes it work fine. Now it's at 0% usage most of the time and goes up to ~10% when the window re-renders. Thanks y'all!

(In my case, setting the priority to "Low" made it a little bit more responsive than "Normal" but it still used 100% CPU)

[3dfoster]

@bpasero I am having the same issue on an AMD Ryzen 1300x (four physical cores) so I don't think it is a single core issue.

[hiwjcn]

same here

[JohnProg]

same here

[jmbuhr]

same issue on Win 10, with code and code-exploration. Also code doesn't open without internet connection

[LydiaMennes]

same here, it makes the IDE almost unusable

[r4hulCorleone]

I had same problem with newest update ,1 physical core ,100 cpu usage,window 7

[ergenekonyigit]

same problem here.

• macOS 10.14.1
• code 1.29.1

[KristofStroobants]

Same problem here. I reverted back to 1.25
Seems like that is the latest usable version for me.
Is there any update on a fix ????

[gustaff-weldon]

Experiencing the same issue. CodeHelper is stuck on ~100%.

ps aux output on that process:

✗ ps aux | grep 13158
-edited-    13158  99.5  1.4  6194332 242864   ??  R    Tue09AM  59:28.99 /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Frameworks/Code Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/Code Helper /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/extensions/node_modules/typescript/lib/tsserver.js --useInferredProjectPerProjectRoot --enableTelemetry --cancellationPipeName /var/folders/5b/gz8j6f890kb2pd1n6zfn09c00000gn/T/vscode-typescript/tscancellation-87c31d99c306e6ae821e.tmp* --locale en --noGetErrOnBackgroundUpdate

Looks like Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/extensions/node_modules/typescript/lib/tsserver.js is a culprint. My project is a monorepo with a lot of JS code (not TS enabled)

OSX 10.13.6
Code 1.29.1 (1.29.1)

[kyegupov]

same issue (Linux - Xubuntu 18.10, vscode 1.29.1)

[lautis0503]

This could be a bug from electron. There's a bug fix finally.
https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/15975

[bpasero]

I finished a build with the fix from electron/electron#15975:

https://az764295.vo.msecnd.net/insider/5967828c2a5c559ed86c3369ed9811bb1bd6386b/VSCode-win32-x64-1.31.0-insider.zip

Can people report back if this is fixed with that build?

[9chu]

I finished a build with the fix from electron/electron#15975:

https://az764295.vo.msecnd.net/insider/5967828c2a5c559ed86c3369ed9811bb1bd6386b/VSCode-win32-x64-1.31.0-insider.zip

Can people report back if this is fixed with that build?

Solved on my VPS with 1 core CPU, running Windows Server 2012 R2.

[DFineNormal]

I finished a build with the fix from electron/electron#15975:

https://az764295.vo.msecnd.net/insider/5967828c2a5c559ed86c3369ed9811bb1bd6386b/VSCode-win32-x64-1.31.0-insider.zip

Can people report back if this is fixed with that build?

This build fixed the issue for me.
Tested on 2 x single core VMs running Win 2008 and 2008 R2 respectively

[bpasero]

Very cool, thanks for confirming!

[bpasero]

Closing this issue given that we plan to release VSCode stable early February with Electron 3.x. If you want to benefit from the fix already, consider to use our insiders version that already contains the fix: https://code.visualstudio.com/insiders/

[KristofStroobants]

Insider or not; electron 3 or not, VS Code takes minutes to just open up.
My only good working version is v1.25. Anything above that is so slow that it becomes unusable at this point. There are so many people mentioning this but i haven't read about a fix. Yeah you can have a look into the processes but that gives you numbers we don't even understand. I really wish you guys either came out with a fix OR with some better way for us to help finding out what is causing this.

[viniciusgati]

I finished a build with the fix from electron/electron#15975:
https://az764295.vo.msecnd.net/insider/5967828c2a5c559ed86c3369ed9811bb1bd6386b/VSCode-win32-x64-1.31.0-insider.zip
Can people report back if this is fixed with that build?

This build fixed the issue for me.
Tested on 2 x single core VMs running Win 2008 and 2008 R2 respectively

Me to.

[ssj7]

I have a core i7 and it still takes about 10 sec to open an ionic project. I have 16GB ram.
Version: 1.31.1 (user setup)
Commit: 1b8e8302e405050205e69b59abb3559592bb9e60
Date: 2019-02-12T02:20:54.427Z
Electron: 3.1.2
Chrome: 66.0.3359.181
Node.js: 10.2.0
V8: 6.6.346.32
OS: Windows_NT x64 6.3.9600