Computer process "System" taking 50% cpu power?

Just started doing this for some reason, usually idle my pc uses around 15-20% cpu power from background programs and such. With WOW running on one monitor at full 60 fps settings, it goes up to about 75-80% with the other programs still open on second monitor.

Yesterday or this morning, it's at 50% idle, and 100% with WOW only getting around 30-40 fps.

Checking taskmanager, I get this:
"system" SYSTEM 53%(cpu) 260K (memory usage)
I'm NOT referring to System Idle process, which is always the remainding number.
It just shows Image name - System, User Name - SYSTEM and I can;t ever remember seeing that on top before. No hard drive is being accessed, and no net connection is being used while idle.


Any ideas? Windows xp sp2, cpu duo2 2.1ghz.

Virus. Delete nao!

Rollback.

[quote name='sylentwulf']Just started doing this for some reason, usually idle my pc uses around 15-20% cpu power from background programs and such. With WOW running on one monitor at full 60 fps settings, it goes up to about 75-80% with the other programs still open on second monitor.

Yesterday or this morning, it's at 50% idle, and 100% with WOW only getting around 30-40 fps.

Checking taskmanager, I get this:
"system" SYSTEM 53%(cpu) 260K (memory usage)
I'm NOT referring to System Idle process, which is always the remainding number.
It just shows Image name - System, User Name - SYSTEM and I can;t ever remember seeing that on top before. No hard drive is being accessed, and no net connection is being used while idle.


Any ideas? Windows xp sp2, cpu duo2 2.1ghz.[/QUOTE]Get this to give you a better idea of where it's coming from, one would hope. http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/ProcessExplorer.zip

Did you install any programs or change any system settings?

It's likely it's a virus of some kind, but it could also be a conflict between processes that should be running but don't work well together. For example, my sound card and my wireless music server hate each other -- if both of them are running at the same time, my system goes to 90% and stays there.

If you changed anything, try and remember exactly what you did, undo it and see if it's better. Redo it to confirm its the problem. And then figure out a way to work around it.

Looks like process monitor would help a lot, if I had ANY idea how to use it/what to do with it

There are a few programs like screen savers, etc that waste too much resources on your computer. Really what you have to do it hit ctrl+Alt+Delete and write down all the programs that are running in you computer and research each program.

Many ISPs are notoriously bad for installing lots of useless software on you PC.

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EDIT: When I do graphics work, I shut down almost ever program running (especially anything to do with internet since I dont need them). It helps alot because graphics take up a lot of power.

[quote name='Xevious']There are a few programs like screen savers, etc that waste too much resources on your computer. Really what you have to do it hit ctrl+Alt+Delete and write down all the programs that are running in you computer and research each program.

Many ISPs are notoriously bad for installing lots of useless software on you PC.

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EDIT: When I do graphics work, I shut down almost ever program running (especially anything to do with internet since I dont need them). It helps alot because graphics take up a lot of power.[/QUOTE]That's why process explorer is nice. You can get information and run searches on any of the processes right away.

Ended up finding some old stuff that was supposedly uninstalled using process explorer from that website. Great program. Autoruns helped out alot too. Back to normal now.