I have a Windows XP Pro SP2 Workstation. If I log in as an administrator it behaves normally. If I
login as a non administrator power user the system seems to hang. Task Manager shows lsass.exe at
between 92% and 97% CPU. This continues for several minutes and then stops.

I find a posting from about a year ago via Google that describes my situation (see below).
Unfortunately, it did not have a response.

How do I fix the problem?

Stu

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Jun 9 2005, 2:35 am show options

Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin
From: test1234567 <test1234567.1qc...@no-mx.forums.iamnotageek.com> - Find messages by this author
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 02:35:50 -0500
Local: Thurs, Jun 9 2005 2:35 am
Subject: Re: LSASS.EXE process consuming 100% CPU time
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I have the same problem with two computers runnin XP

The problem starts appearing under these conditions:

- You try to copy an EFS (windows encryted) file from one computer to
the other target computer using a (home) LAN connection.

- The system warns you that the file cannot be copied unless the
encryption is removed. You select 'Ignore All' button in the encryption
dialog box.

- The file starts being copied to the targed computer (in both cases I
had also EFS active in the targed computer user profile). I noted that
during this time the processor works high only on the target computer
(may be the decryption is done there?!!)

- After the file ends beeing copied, everything seems ok.

- However, the next time you (re)start the target computer, and login
to that profile, LSASS goes to nearly 100% of CPU usage for a few
minutes. In a Pentium III 466MHz this takes about 10 minutes. In a
Centrino Mobile processor of 1.5 GHz this takes about 1 minute. After
this everything goes well.

- This happen then every time you loggin to the same user profile in
the target computer. The problem does not show for the other user
accounts (profiles).

- The source computer where the EFS file originated is not affected at
all by this problem.
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