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I thought that running an apparently harmless Clean-up command, the one included in the Administrative Tools, on my Windows Server 2016 would be a piece of cake and it turned out to be a complete mess. Not only hardly anything was deleted but it stalled my server. CPU and memory raised to 100% and as a consequence of this, the SQL Server engine couldn't run properly and therefore all my websites connecting to that server went down (and the phone started ringing).

After a short investigation I found out that the CPU and memory usage was up to 100%, this was caused by a process called TiWorker.exe consuming all resources [![See The Resource Monitor] 1]1. What the heck are you going to ask? Well, I indeed waited for 3 hours hoping that TiWorker.exe would end up gracefully but no, it didn't, and I had to kill it. In a matter of seconds, the server CPU and memory usage were down and all my websites were back online.

Before running that clean-up command again I am wondering if anybody around knows what happened and what to do to prevent it? Right now everything is running smoothly.

Greg Askew
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Corobori
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  • I don't think guidance can be provided without details of the host. Which doesn't seem to have a lot of resources. And don't provide the command that you ran. – Greg Askew Oct 22 '21 at 22:20

1 Answers1

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The TiWorker system process is related to Windows Update. This is one of the critical process included on in Microsoft Services and must not be mistaken for any malware issues. If there are any updates happening or if the computer is scanning for any update release, this system process may use resources on your computer, the reason why you see it has high CPU usage under task manager.

According to this page

You can prevent long-term CPU usage by Windows Modules Installer Worker and lower CPU usage of TiWorker.exe

In this other link you will find more suggested solutions

Ismael Clemente Aguirre
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  • Thank you Ismael, I like what I read in the 1st article. I will perform those tasks next holiday no make sure not to many users will be affected. – Corobori Oct 22 '21 at 21:59