Fix for OneDrive high CPU

If your OneDrive seems to be constantly running at a higher than expected CPU (anything above 10%), then this fix may help. It worked for me. CPU settled down after a while.

To see what’s eating your CPU, press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC. On the ‘Process’ tab sort the ‘CPU’ column to show the largest number at the top. If you see OneDrive up at the top most of the time, then it probably needs this reset. It should be pretty much on 0% once all is synced.

All your account settings and files will remain in tact. Make sure you have installed the latest version too ( https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/download/ ).

  1. Press the Windows key + R to open the Run Window.
  2. In the Run Window enter the following:
    %localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /reset
  3. Click OK. The OneDrive system tray icon on the desktop should disappear and re-appear after a minute or two.
  4. If the OneDrive system tray icon does not re-appear after a few minutes, do the following. In the Run Window Enter:
    %localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe

6 thoughts on “Fix for OneDrive high CPU

  1. I think it is just due to bad design? I have a large amount of data on my one drive, and every time I reboot my pc It then goes and re-scans all that data to look for changes. I have as much data on dropbox, and it hardly does this for as long. Must say out of all the storage providers one drive definitely has the worst pc client. It often gets confused and you have to reset it, and then it goes and fetches everything again.

  2. Thanks!

    I’ve been using OneDrive for years, with about 300 Gb synced, and today was my first experience of this high CPU usage. The reset worked great (though I had to restart it manually). The CPU is back to normal.

    Sam

  3. Issue (1 vCPU used at 100%) is linked to non US character set in USERNAME josé andreàs …

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