so i left my task manager on and left the room when I came back, 'system' ntoskrnl.exe process was using 40%cpu until i move my mouse. this did not happen yesterday and i didn't do anything online except youtube instagram, discord, basically social media and nothing else. update: so i downloaded process explorer from the microsoft official site and ran it and the culprit seems to be ntoskrnl.exe!PsReturnProcessNonPagesPoolQuota . so I looked all over the internet for solutions and finally found this https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-performance/ntoskrnlexertlsidhashlookup0x1ffc-using-constantly/f712cc9d-8dd3-4381-80ed-244cb1012990 it seemed to be memory diagnostics to be the culprit. i ran it from the task scheduler and checked process explorer, it's the same process . i disabled it and now ntoskrnl.exe! and the annoying PsReturnProcessNonPagesPoolQuota isn't bothering me more