cpu usage 100%!!

[marky2027]

Hope someone can help here. Running windows xp and the pc is a packard bell with 768 mb, celeron D processor. When I am on line sometimes I hear like a fan whirring up and the task manager is reading CPU usage 100%. This sometimes drops down to 2 or 3% by itself but sometimes stays at 100% and the freezes and I have to end the application. I am fairly computer literate but thats about it. Any thoughts anyone??

[rush_tech]

Look in task manager to see what process is using the CPU....

[Guest]

I predict windows update

[Geoff]

Or Sophos

[elsiegee40]

We've got a problem on one PC with Symantec that gobbles all the CPU occasionally

[ICT_GUY]

I predict windows update

 

Fixed with an update in september?

[marky2027]

On auto updates for windows so presume thats all up to date. The only task running when it happens is IE. I could understand it if i had several running at once but I haven't

[Geoff]

It might be an addon for IE, for example Flash.

[Joanne]

have you scanned for spyware?

[marky2027]

Regularly scan for spyware with several different programmes so don't think it's that

It might be an addon for IE, for example Flash.

How will i know if it is an add on causing it??

[djm968]

Which Process is it? Open the task manager and click the process tab

 

(Click Start > Run and type taskmgr)

 

Click the CPU title twice this will sort the processes into CPU usage order and you can then identify which process is hogging 100%

[Geoff]

It might be an addon for IE, for example Flash.

How will i know if it is an add on causing it??

 

Well for example if it's flash or java then you'll only start hitting the problem when the plugin loads. For example, the flash plugin will only load if IE find a page with flash content.

 

Alternatively you can go into Tool -> Manage Addons -> Enable/Disable Addons and disable everything. If the problem goes away, you know it's an addon causing the problem. You can futher narrow it down by re-enabling addons one by one until you can reproduce the problem. Hence it'll be the last addon you enabled that's broken.

[srochford]

On auto updates for windows so presume thats all up to date. The only task running when it happens is IE. I could understand it if i had several running at once but I haven't

 

Not necessarily up to date. the problem (which was fixed by an update) is that the process running Windows update does exactly what you're seeing. You'll know that this is the case if, when you look at task manager, you see an svchost processing using nearly 100% CPU. This will stop updates installing properly and show you the problem you're seeing.

 

Although you think you only have 1 IE process running, the computer itself is running lots more processes - 20 or so services plus various other things connected with them. This is why you need to look at taskmgr to find out what's actually happening.

 

With tasmgr running, click View and choose select columns. Tick the colums for I/O Read Bytes and I/O Write Bytes. Look at those figures for each process - the one causing the problem will show one or both of those increasing quickly.

 

The other possible problem is that Windows desktop search could have been installed on your machine by a recent "faulty" update from MS. While this is not a virus, it exhibits most of the symptoms of a virus in that it can trash your machine :-) If it is installed then you might want to remove it (unless, of course, you find it useful)