How to fix OneDrive high CPU usage on Windows 10
OneDrive is bundled with Windows 10. The service itself isn’t bad but the app that Microsoft constantly tries to push to its users has its problems. Thankfully, you can uninstall OneDrive if you don’t use the service. If you do use the OneDrive app and it’s consuming a disproportionate amount of your CPU, then this might have to do with your name. There could be other causes but if you happen to have a name that is spelled using a accented character then it might be the cause for the OneDrive high CPU usage.
Note: There may be other causes to OneDrive high CPU usage and this solution may not work for you in that case. You can always try uninstalling and reinstalling the app. This fix applies to the desktop version of OneDrive and not the UWP app that you can download from the Microsoft Store.
Fix OneDrive high CPU usage
Open Task Manager and look for OneDrivesetup.exe in the list of running processes. Go to the following location. Replace ‘Your Name’ with your own user name.
C:\Users\your name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive\setup\logs
Here, you need to look for two files named, UserTelemetryCache.otc and UserTelemetryCache.otc.session. If you don’t see them, enable View Hidden Files in File Explorer from the View tab. Delete them both.
Once they’ve been deleted, go to the following location, and again, replace Your Name with your own user name.
C:\Users\your username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive\Update
Here, look for a file called OneDriveSetup.exe, and run it. This ought to solve the high CPU usage problem. For good measure, restart your system.
High CPU usage
High CPU usage by OneDrive means that it’s consuming more CPU power than it should. You can see its CPU usage by sorting processes in the Task Manager by CPU usage. If however, OneDrive is simply consuming more CPU than the other apps you’re running and the amount is still under 10%, it’s not a bug. It may be normal, depending on your system configuration.
OneDrive shouldn’t be using 80 or 100% of your CPU. Its usage might spike on occasion which isn’t a problem however, if it’s constantly using more CPU than it should, and your user name happens to contain an accented character, or a character that isn’t an ASCII character than that might be the cause.
If you still have high CPU usage, and no other fix appears to work, try using the UWP version of OneDrive. It works almost as well though it doesn’t have the useful panel containing a list of your files that you can access from the system tray.
The UWP app has another disadvantage: it does not sync your files locally! It seems to be a replacement for opening the website, not for the local app.