CmdAgent.exe utilizing 100% CPU
October 8th, 2009 | 
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Yesterday was a very bad day for me. No sooner had I posted yesterday’s article then my computer became impossible to use.
Even though I have anti-virus software installed on my computer, every indication was that I had picked up some virus, not just on the tower I use every day, but on the 2003 server I have my exchange server on.
Tracking down the problem took 4 hours. I hope this can save someone a few of those hours.
My first mistake tracking this down was that I didn’t check the “show processes from all users” check box in task manager. So when I looked in task manager I couldn’t see any tasks that were eating up CPU time even though I could see that the CPU was at 100% utilization.
Tip: Go turn on the “show processes from all users” check box now while you aren’t in the middle of trying to solve a similar problem. You probably won’t see it when you are in the middle of panic problem solving and it is off by default.
Once I turned that on, which was about 2 hours into this because my computers were running so slowly, I could see that CmdAgent.exe was using 100% of the CPU time. What’s CmdAgent.exe?
A Google search indicates that this program is part of the Comodo Firewall package. Sometimes a cold boot or a warm boot clears up the problem.
I also found a post that said something about how to configure the firewall. But it was working perfectly fine up until yesterday morning.
Then I saw an article that said that if the update process sends down a corrupt file, CmdAgent.exe can go into a tailspin. The only reliable way to fix the problem is to uninstall and re-install the software.
- On a computer that doesn’t have the problem, download a recent version of the Comodo Pro package (virus and firewall) and put it on a USB.
- Disconnect your computer from the network.
- Reboot your computer into “safe” mode. You can get there by pressing F8 while booting up. You should eventually see a menu screen with “safe mode” as one of the options.
- In safe mode, uninstall Comodo Pro
- Reboot the computer
- Install the Comodo Pro you just downloaded. This will end by rebooting your computer one more time.
- Once you’ve rebooted, reconnect to your network.
Like I said, I hope this helps someone else save a little time in the future.
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Tags: 3 Responses to “CmdAgent.exe utilizing 100% CPU”
Thanks dude, I was having this problem so do a couple of my friends, atm comodo is behaving but not all the time
Same thing happened to me today. I guess something must have been wrong with an update they pushed out recently. My computer was literally unusable, and so I removed comodo firewall and av from my computer and installed avast and outpost firewall. Much better now!
thank you very much great tip i was having the same problem !!!