On Windows 11, when Cursor writes code, the CPU goes from 55 degrees to 75 degrees which is totally normal. The problem is that after it finishes, the CPU stays hot, even after I close out of Cursor. I looked for processes in Task Manager and closed any process trees that seemed weird or heavy but it didn’t solve the problem. The only thing that gets the temperature back to 55 degrees is a full reboot. I checked other threads and there were some Mac instructions but I didn’t see anything useful for Windows. I went into Cursor Settings but didn’t see anything there either. I have zero extensions installed. Everything is plain vanilla. Help?
Open Cursor, have it create code with Sonnet 4.6. CPU should heat up for the process & fans spin. When it finishes, close Cursor. The high temp & fans persist.
Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known issue. Cursor can sometimes leave background processes running after you close it, like extension-host and Node.js helpers, and they can keep using CPU. The team is aware, but there’s no timeline yet.
To help us understand what’s happening on your side, could you check a couple of things:
After closing Cursor, open Task Manager, go to the Details tab, sort by CPU, and see which processes are using CPU. Look for something like Cursor Helper, node.exe, or electron. A screenshot would really help.
Before closing Cursor, try closing it with Alt+F4 instead of the X button. Sometimes that shuts down child processes more cleanly.
As a temporary workaround, after closing Cursor, open Task Manager and manually end any Cursor or node.exe processes related to Cursor. That should stop the CPU usage without a full reboot.
You mentioned you have zero extensions. That’s useful info, so it’s likely not caused by third-party extensions.
Let me know which processes you see in Task Manager after closing Cursor.
Hey, I see a screenshot from Task Manager. Useful info, here’s what stands out:
System Idle Process shows 92%, which means the CPU is basically 92% idle. More importantly, there’s not a single Cursor process in the screenshot, no cursor.exe, no Cursor Helper, no electron. Looks like Cursor closed cleanly and didn’t leave any orphan processes.
At the same time, you’ve got some pretty heavy stuff running in the background:
com.docker.backend.exe and several docker.exe processes
vmmemWSL (WSL allocates memory and can keep the CPU warm)
LM Studio.exe (local LLM models are also load)
Lots of chrome-headless-shell.exe
For a quick test, after closing Cursor, stop Docker Desktop and WSL by running wsl --shutdown in PowerShell, then check if temps drop. That’ll show whether Cursor is the cause or background services are.
It could also just be thermal inertia. A 7950 can take a while to cool down after load, especially if your fan curve isn’t aggressive.
Thanks I’ll review & let you know if I find something. Your analysis was helpful. It’s not the chip though. Something is running but now it sounds like maybe I’m running my code in Cursor, then shutting down Cursor but my own code is what’s leaving orphan processes.
Yeah, that’s totally possible. If your code starts Docker containers, WSL processes, or headless Chrome like the chrome-headless-shell.exe in your screenshot, they can keep running even after Cursor is closed.
An easy check is to close Cursor, then open PowerShell and run:
wsl --shutdown
Then quit Docker Desktop. If the temperature drops, it’s those processes, not Cursor.
If you want to pinpoint what’s heating up the CPU, open Task Manager, go to the Details tab, sort by CPU, and see which processes are using more than 1 to 2%. In your screenshot there weren’t any Cursor processes at all, so it looks like Cursor exited cleanly.
Yeah I think I figured it out. Basically I vibe coded some new browser functionality and as you said, it left chrome & node.js orphans. I just had to add some garbage collection. I think that was it, not Cursor.
Question: in other platforms, I can add a prompt that creates rules for the LLM, and skills documents. Is there an easy way to do this in Cursor? I’d love to have something appended to every prompt that says something like “Identify any sources of memory leaks and security vulnerabilities for Windows 10 and 11 with these changes.”
Glad you got it sorted out! Adding garbage collection to the code is the right move.
About rules, in Cursor they’re called Rules, and they do exactly what you need. There are two options:
User Rules (for all projects):
Cursor Settings > Rules. You can add text there that will be included in every chat with Agent. For example:
Identify any sources of memory leaks and security vulnerabilities for Windows 10 and 11 with these changes.
Project Rules (for a specific project):
Create a file in .cursor/rules/, for example .cursor/rules/security-check.mdc:
---
description: Check for memory leaks and security vulnerabilities
alwaysApply: true
---
Always identify any sources of memory leaks and security vulnerabilities for Windows 10 and 11 with these changes.
alwaysApply: true means the rule will apply to every request in that project. You can create multiple files with different rules.
