Rundll32.exe Using High CPU on Windows 8.1

I use a Lenovo T440s laptop for my service calls and when I need to do work remotely. My laptop runs Windows 8.1 Professional. I love this laptop and it has proved to be tough as well as extremely fast. I noticed a couple weeks ago that my battery was going dead after about an hour of usage. I also noticed that my cooling fan in the laptop was running louder than normal. I decided to open Task Manger on my laptop to see what the issue was. I soon noticed that a process called rundll32.exe was using around 25 percent of my CPU. I killed the process and everything returned to normal.

Task Manager Windows 8.1 Rundll32.exe

A few days later, my battery was going dead very rapidly. My cooling fan was on almost constantly and was blowing warm air. I opened Task Manger and sure enough, rundll32.exe was using 25% of my CPU again. I killed the process and everything was fine. It wasn’t long and my laptop was doing the exact same thing as I described before. I decided it was time to get to the bottom of this issue. Here is how I troubleshot what program was using the rundll32.exe and in the process was killing my battery.

Step One: I downloaded Process Explorer. This is an excellent tool. It is similar to Task Manager but goes into way more depth on the processes and dlls that are running. I extracted the download and then ran Process Explorer as an administrator.

Step Two: One of the first things I noticed was rundll32.exe was using 23 percent of my CPU again. Run32DLL.exe

I right-clicked on the rundll32.exe process and selected properties. I clicked on the Image tab and at once saw the culprit. A utility to monitor and gauge my battery usage, called PwrMgrBkGndMonitor, was draining my battery instead of saving it.

ThinkPad Power Management PwrMgrBkGndMonitor

Step Three: After a little digging around in my installed programs I located a program called Lenovo Settings Dependency Package. PwrMgrBkGndMonitor was installed in the Lenovo Settings Dependency Package.

Lenovo Settings Dependency Package

I didn’t use this program and decided I didn’t need it. I uninstalled the program and restarted my laptop. I haven’t had a problem with the rundll32.exe using up my CPU since I uninstalled Lenovo Settings Dependency Package.

If you are experiencing the same symptoms has stated above and you are running a Lenovo laptop with Windows 8.1, this may be your issue. However, before you uninstall the program I would recommend using Process Explorer. Process Explorer will help you determine the exact program that is giving you issues before blindly uninstalling and killing services. I hope my troubleshooting steps can help you find program is making rundll32.exe use high CPU usage. Let me know in the comments if this helped you!

This was posted by techspeeder.

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