CPU Usage at 100% most of the time...thus PC is slow...HELP!

doubledown

doubledown

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I recently came back from vacation and I fired up my PC (I usually leave it on, but shut it down over the weekend) and when I came back, my PC was terribly slow.

I have Windows XP with 1 Gig RAM and 3.x GHZ processor. Not sure of all the specs off-hand.

Anyways, When I look at my Task Manager the CPU Usage seems to stay at around 80-100%, which makes everything rather slow. No "weird" processes are running in the background. It appears that the System Idle Process is the only thing using any CPU Usage (which should NOT factor into the slowdown).

I ran, SpyBot, Ewido and AdAware and it is still slow. A little better, but slow. I only had a few tracking cookies, so nothing major was wrong.

Would a loose connection on the motherboard or something like that cause the PC to go slow? A bad Power Supply? I'm lost at what to do next besides formatting...which is my LAST resort. But I just did that probably less than a year ago...so it's not loaded up with crap.

I also turned off my Start-Up processes, which were few anyways.

Any Suggestions? Help!
 
I sometimes get that on my new laptop, which has 1 gig of ram and is running at 2 ghz with Windows XP professional. I used to get the same problem, so what I did was create a new profile, delete the old one and it fixed the problem.
 
I sometimes get that on my new laptop, which has 1 gig of ram and is running at 2 ghz with Windows XP professional. I used to get the same problem, so what I did was create a new profile, delete the old one and it fixed the problem.
 
Download a FREE virus scanner ( GOOGLE AVG FREE ) and scan ur PC. Also, did you recently download Service Pack 2 or something?
 
Download a FREE virus scanner ( GOOGLE AVG FREE ) and scan ur PC. Also, did you recently download Service Pack 2 or something?
 
I tried a defrag, I D/L AVG and ran that....tried a few other things.

Maybe I'll try a new profile...never tried anything that simple. I doubt it, but worth a shot. IF I do that, is there any way to copy everything over or link it to a new profile? I only have ONE profile on my machine....
 
I guess you could just move your "Documents and Settings" folder over then delete the other one. Make sure you give yourself admin on the new profile too.
 
BEST program to run incase of some sort of virus slowing down your computer:

http://www.superantispyware.com/

Works WONDERS.

Also, any idea if it's overheating? If it is, or is on the verge of, you might need to apply some better thermal grease to your heatsink, or possibly get a new heatsink altogether. if you still can't find the problem, I'd recommend checking out a PC tech forum.
 
First I'd try running in safe mode. If you still have problems, then I'd look into hardware.

Try out CPU-Z to see if your system stats are where they're supposed to be. Check your processor speed, FSB, and memory. Maybe go into your BIOS and reset it to default, make sure you aren't overclocking, or turn off Hyper-threading if it's on. I don't think this has much of a chance of helping, but it's all easy.
 
I don't overclock or do anything fancy.....a basic setup. I posted on a WindowsBBS board, and no help there either. No McAfee either....

I'm not sure if it's overheating....I'll have to check my fans again. I know the power supply fan is making some noise at times...the loud whining noise. I usually tap the case and it stops.
 
I'd check it in safe mode like others suggested if it is slow there then you know its hardware. I doubt its overheating and I doubt its a power supply issue. Generally if it overheats it'll have an alarm get real slow then cut itself off. If its the power supply it'll generally just go poof and smell like toast and not cut back on. It sounds like you either got a nice virus or your hard drive is trying to die. I'd recommend checking to see if it performs crappily in safe mode. If it does perform crappily in safe mode then run fdisk from a boot cd to see if you got bad spots on your hard drive.
 
Other thing is, I cannot even get into Safe Mode. I cannot see anything on my monitor until the login screen. Basically, my monitor kicks in ONLY when the login screen comes in...which puzzles me. Not sure if it's because I'm using a TV/monitor. But, it should be sending a signal. Not sure if that ever worked, as I never really paid attention. I think it did though.

I tried hitting F8, but I cannot see anything...so no Safe Mode.
 
[quote name='doubledown']Other thing is, I cannot even get into Safe Mode. I cannot see anything on my monitor until the login screen. Basically, my monitor kicks in ONLY when the login screen comes in...which puzzles me. Not sure if it's because I'm using a TV/monitor. But, it should be sending a signal. Not sure if that ever worked, as I never really paid attention. I think it did though.

I tried hitting F8, but I cannot see anything...so no Safe Mode.[/QUOTE]

Yeah that right there could be problematic. Was it always hooked up this way cause it seems like that'd be a gigantic pain if you wanted to reformat too as it would probably not want to start up your tv/monitor then either and a reformat sounds like a fairly likely possibility from the symtpoms. Is this TV/Monitor hooked up DVI or thru some kind of TVout port on the video card?
 
You can tell your computer to boot into safe mode on the next restart. At the run dialog, type "msconfig". Select the Boot.ini tab. Under Boot Options select the Safeboot checkbox. Be warned that if you can't see 800x600 at all, you might have a hard time getting out of it!
 
[quote name='doubledown']Other thing is, I cannot even get into Safe Mode. I cannot see anything on my monitor until the login screen. Basically, my monitor kicks in ONLY when the login screen comes in...which puzzles me. Not sure if it's because I'm using a TV/monitor. But, it should be sending a signal. Not sure if that ever worked, as I never really paid attention. I think it did though.

I tried hitting F8, but I cannot see anything...so no Safe Mode.[/QUOTE]

I just purchased a new monitor, and mine does the same thing now. Very strange.
 
I use DVI.

The monitor is a HP LC2600N (26" LCD). Great TV/monitor, so I'm not getting rid of it....maybe I have to try and force some mode when it boots. Not sure.

I just wish I could get it to go back to normal. It's weird that this all happened afterI shut down for the weekend.
 
Hey double, download Process Explorer from Sysinternals. It gives you a very detailed look at what processes are running on your computer and how much resources each are using. If it just so happens that you see alot of resources being used for Hardware Interrupts, you might be having a hardware conflict.
 
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