Hi guys - my first post!

I have a 1.53Ghz non-networked PC running XP. I have the lateest versions of AVG antivirus, Spybot and AdAware.

The CPU usage is always very high sometimes dipping to 40 but usually running at 80+. When doing nothing the only process with high CPU activity is the System Idle Process which is running at 90 or above. I have checked for new updates and run all antivirus and antispy programs and they have found nothing. I'm not doing any system procedures (that I aware of) such as defraging or compressing the disk and the problem persits when I am offline.

If anyone can shed some light on this problem I would be very grateful as I am fresh out of ideas.

Thanks
Gargarensis

Originally Posted by gargarensis

Hi guys - my first post!

I have a 1.53Ghz non-networked PC running XP. I have the lateest versions of AVG antivirus, Spybot and AdAware.

The CPU usage is always very high sometimes dipping to 40 but usually running at 80+. When doing nothing the only process with high CPU activity is the System Idle Process which is running at 90 or above. I have checked for new updates and run all antivirus and antispy programs and they have found nothing. I'm not doing any system procedures (that I aware of) such as defraging or compressing the disk and the problem persits when I am offline.

If anyone can shed some light on this problem I would be very grateful as I am fresh out of ideas.

Thanks
Gargarensis

System Idle Process running at 90 % Or above is normal, this means that 10 % or less is being used when the system is Idle. Below is a screen cap of my running processes. HTH

Thanks for this Bear - I never did understand precisely what the ambiguous "System Idle Process" meant. That explains part of my problem but the CPU usage is constantly going at an average of betwwen 70 and 90 without explanation - if not spyware or viruses (which im pretty sure its not) what could cause this?

Gargarensis

Where are you monitoring this usage? The total is on the bottom line of the Task Manager (as seen above).

Point being that if System Idle is at 90% then there is only 10% in use somewhere. (or as in Bear's example 2% & 98%).

You should be able to see what's using what in the above list of processes.

I am monitoring the CPU usage from the Windows Task Manager (aka Ctrl Alt Del) and CPU usage suggests that 80% of CPU power is being used when at the same time the System Idle Process is at 90% ( id send you a screenshot but I dont know how) The Task Manager displays all of the processes but the System Idle process and CPU usage figure ALWAYS add up to more than 100% and sometimes up to 180%. What I really need is some way to see how fast the processor is really working at as obviously the CPU usage figure or SIP figure is erroneous.

how does it show under the perfomance tab?

also try Administrative Tools/ Performance (in pro, dont know about home)

Does anything "ring a bell" HERE

I had this same issue with my laptop cpu and memory usage went through the roof kept running spyware and a/v scans but found nothing but I had a look in add/remove programs and found some s/w that shouldn't have been there (classified as spyware)

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