Vivaldi Utility: Storage Service causing high CPU usage
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As titled, the Utility: Storage Service is causing high CPU utilisation.
I tested it with a clean Vivaldi Profile with 0 extensions, but the issue still persists.
Vivaldi 6.1.3035.111 (Stable channel) (64-bit)
Windows 10 22H2 (OS Build 19045.3086)
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@Bludenbuz Do you use Vivaldi Mail, Calendar, Feeds?
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@DoctorG No, I do not use them. I selected only the web browser when I installed Vivaldi.
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Hi, is there any possible solution or workaround? Cheers.
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@Bludenbuz Never saw such high consumption with this service on Windows 11 22H2.
My only idea, a security tool (Antivirus, Internet Security) could block and cause high usage.
Do you have processes after you closes Vivaldi (check Windwos taskmanager)?
Does this CPU usage happen after your restarted Vivaldi?Try uninstall Vivaldi, download installer and re-install.
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Is there any way to go around a security tool issue? I suspect it could be the cause, as my company does emphasize Edge & Chrome usage..
After I close Vivaldi, the utilisation returns to normal. I tried reinstalling as standalone in a non-standard directory, but the high CPU utilisation persists.
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@Bludenbuz Disable your security tool, restart Vivaldi and try again.
Most good security tools allow to be temporarily disabled. Unless this is locked down by admins of course.
The Storage Service process is responsible for writing to disk, and could be blocked by a security scan for instance.
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@Pathduck Dang, I am unable to disable the Security Tool haha. Oh well, I guess I have to live with the high CPU utilisation.
It typically uses about 15-40% of CPU based on Task Manager. Although Vivaldi's Task Manager always shows it as 99%-100% CPU..
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It typically uses about 15-40% of CPU based on Task Manager. Although Vivaldi's Task Manager always shows it as 99%-100% CPU..
This is because Vivaldi's shows load accumulated over cores, while in Windows the task manager shows an average. So on a four-core system, 100% load in Vivaldi is 25% load in the OS. Max. load in Vivaldi would be 400%.
There are tools you can use to dig deeper, like Process Explorer.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorerIn properties for a process, you can look at performance, IO, and the Threads tab is sometimes very useful for finding what it's doing, sorted by CPU:
Of course, here just an idle process.
You can also use Process Monitor to capture a log of what a process is doing:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon
But I think it requires Administrator elevation to run.And what about the Storage Service process in other browsers like Edge/Chrome etc? They also show the same CPU use?
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@Pathduck Thanks for the informative reply.
I found out the exact security tool which is causing the high cpu usage via the name of the DLL shown in Process Explorer.
However, I am unable to kill the thread belonging to the security tool even with admin rights. "Unable to access thread" is the error shown in Process Explorer.
Chrome/Edge isn't facing this issue, as they are apparently "whitelisted" browsers.
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@Bludenbuz Great, now you at least know the culprit
What's the name of this security tool/DLL or can't you tell? It might help others to know.
So you are able to elevate to Admin permissions on your system through UAC? If so, it's kind of strange they allow regular users access to that. But if you are a member of local Administrators you should be able to do mostly anything on this system, including disabling the security tool and possibly adding Vivaldi to some "whitelist" - but it might be controlled by Group Policies of course.
However, I am unable to kill the thread belonging to the security tool even with admin rights.
Even if you could kill the thread, it's generally a Bad Idea to forcibly terminate threads - you only risk crashing the process. Best case, it just restarts the process, worst case it crashes the whole browser.
I guess the security tool hooks its DLL into the Vivaldi process. Avast on my system does the same, but I've not had the same CPU load problems with that here.
By the way, you can use Ctrl+L in ProcExp to open details on Handles/DLLs/Threads for a process with some more detailed information.
Chrome/Edge isn't facing this issue, as they are apparently "whitelisted" browsers.
Yeah, not sure if it's a whitelist or something else. I know that from 6.1 Vivaldi identifies on a lower OS level as
chrome.exe. That might be causing some incompatibility with the security tool thinking it's "Chrome".Try this for a quick test:
Get Vivaldi 6.0 from the archive and install as a Standalone, and test if it has the same issue.
https://vivaldi.com/download/archive/Other than that, I think this is a matter for your IT people. They might even have to create a support ticket to the security vendor. So it really depends on their attitude and service will. If they say "We only support Chrome and Edge" then it could be difficult. But if you can prove that it's the security tool DLL causing the load, then it's not really Vivaldi's fault and it should be fixed.
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@Pathduck Unfortunately, it is an internal security tool, so I am unable to reveal the name.
Yes, I do have admin rights haha, but certain stuff are still restricted via a password.
Thanks for the great insight! It appears that this issue started from V6.1 !! When I downloaded the latest version of V6.0, the issue of high CPU utilisation stopped occurring.
I might be asking for too much, but is there a way to revert Vivaldi >=6.1 to have the same lower OS level behaviour?
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@Bludenbuz said in Vivaldi Utility: Storage Service causing high CPU usage:
When I downloaded the latest version of V6.0, the issue of high CPU utilisation stopped occurring.
Well, it at least strengthens the theory that this is about identifying as
chrome.exe. But still not definite, it might be other stuff going on.Try the same, only with 6.1 as a Standalone install?
I might be asking for too much, but is there a way to revert Vivaldi >=6.1 to have the same lower OS level behaviour?
No, this is compiled into the executable. You'll need to do it with a hex editor, and I have no idea if that would even work or just crash...
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@Pathduck said in Vivaldi Utility: Storage Service causing high CPU usage:
this is compiled into the executable. You'll need to do it with a hex editor
That will result in loss of valid code signature and can cause other issues with security software on Windows.
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@DoctorG Yes of course - this would only be for testing, just to show that the process identifying as Chrome is causing this security tool to be confused, not a permanent solution.
But I wouldn't even know how to verify that changing strings in the hex editor actually returns the correct name without a debugger and I'm not a developer.
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@Bludenbuz It's not impossible if you convince your IT people to fix your broken security tool that causes high CPU
Try other Chromium browsers - Opera, Brave is probably also not "known" and might have the same problem with this tool.
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@Pathduck They have no intention to fix it sadly. They just told me to stick to Chrome or Edge.
Thanks, I'll give the other Chromium based browsers a try and see how it goes.
I'll miss Vivaldi though
I'll probably use 6.0 until it is not safe to use.Out of curiosity, what caused Vivaldi developers to change Vivaldi to identify as chrome.exe in the lower OS level?
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@Bludenbuz said in Vivaldi Utility: Storage Service causing high CPU usage:
Thanks, I'll give the other Chromium based browsers a try and see how it goes.
It's only for testing - you don't have to stick with them.
I'll probably use 6.0 until it is not safe to use.
Like I said, when the Vivaldi task manager says 100%, it depends on your system number of cores. If you have an 8-core CPU, it means it's using 12.5% CPU. It's not a huge amount, so depends if you notice it or not.
Out of curiosity, what caused Vivaldi developers to change Vivaldi to identify as chrome.exe in the lower OS level?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/12zho7u/amd_drivers_allegedly_have_hardcoded/
It's simply not fair to small browsers when the large companies (and local IT people) are ignorant of the fact alternative browsers even exist... it's just ignorance and stupidity and destroys the market for any alternative browsers to have to constantly fight against this discriminating crap.
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@Pathduck Sadly, I do feel the difference running my daily tasks on my laptop
My laptop does not feel as snappy.
I'll see how it goes next week
Damn, I didn't know the outright bias against smaller browsers are this bad.
From my testing, Brave does not seem to be affected by the security tool.
Opera flat out cannot be installed.. it should be blocked by something.
