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sdmedina1

9 Posts

18795

October 14th, 2004 00:00

Task Manager Shows CPU Usage is Very High Yet all Programs Run Well

Hi,
I've had my Dell Dimension 8100 for over 3 years.  I bought a Pentium 4, 1300 MHZ, 1.28 GHz, and 128 MB of RAM.  In that time I have installed a second hard drive (120GB), a new CD/RW drive, and a AVer Media TV tuner card.  The latter two just recently.  Last week, while I had the TV program on and Internet explorer, my computer suddenly restarted itself.  I thought nothing of until it did it again twice last night. 
I decided to look at the Task Manager to see if I had something running that was eating up my memory.   Everything seemed fine until I looked at the CPU Usage which showed rapid up and down spiking and reaching the 90% and even 100%.  I decided to turn off all programs I had running and the CPU Usage returned to normal.  But when I start ANY program, the CPU Usage will skyrocket to the high 80%s - 90%s.  No programs run slow despite this high CPU Usage.  In fact they run normal if not better.
I wonder if anyone out there has experienced any similar problems and if so is my computer restarting itself due to this high cpu usage?  Also, I would greatly appreciate if anyone can tell me whether they know what could be causing this high spiking in my cpu usage and how to remedy the problem.  I have McAfee Virus/Firewall protection and it shows no known viruses.  Please offer any help you can in this matter.  Thank you. 

KevanRiley

6 Posts

October 15th, 2004 15:00

it sounds like some spyware has infected your machine what you should do is download Adaware, and run a full system scan on your machine.  It might be a good idea to go to your control panel and go to add/remove progams and remove any suspicious programs that you may have not installed. 

You can also see what you have running in startup in the windows registry.  Go to start -> run and type in regedit.  Then navigate to

\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

This will tell you all the processes that your computer is running at startup you can delete keys o the processes that you do not need, but be careful.

 

 
 
 
 
 

sdmedina1

9 Posts

October 15th, 2004 19:00

Thank you so much for replying.  I will definitely do both things you suggested and get back to you immediately to see if they remedied the problem.  Please continue to view this post.  Thanks.

sdmedina1

9 Posts

October 16th, 2004 16:00

Again, thanks for your response.  Unfortunately, even though I installed, ran, and deleted all uneccesary files AdWare scanned.  It did not solve my abnormally high CPU Usage.  Also, I could safely identify all programs running at startup on my registry.  Any other suggestions as to why my CPU Usage is acting so crazy?  The only reason I am worried about this problem is that within the past 2 weeks, my computer has restarted itself for absolutely no reason at all.  The 1st time it happened, I attributed it to too many programs I had running.  But the 2nd, and 3rd times, I was only browsing with Internet Explorer.  The only thing I could think of as to why this was happening was the up and down spiking of my CPU Usage.  If there is any other suggestions, advice, or answers, you could give me, it would be most appreciated.  Thanks.

KevanRiley

6 Posts

October 18th, 2004 10:00

Rebooting your computer for no reason at all sounds like virus activity.  You should go to http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/  this is a tool that McAfee offers for no charge.  It will find and remove viruses that you have on your computer.  They update with all new virus threats.  So if you download it today, and run it and delete the viruses on your computer, the tool will be outdated next week.  Add this site to your favorites, and download the tool.  When you open up the tool, be sure to go into 'Preferences' and make sure that 'Scan Boot Sectors' is checked as well as 'Scan All Files' they are not checked by default.  Let me know how it turns out.  Good Luck.
 

sdmedina1

9 Posts

October 19th, 2004 06:00

Thank you for the reply and suggestion.  I just had a couple of questions.  Will my current version of McAfee VirusScan 7.0 interfere with Stinger when I install it?  Also, once Stinger becomes obsolete do I uninstall the program or just leave it on my computer.  Please let me know as soon as you can.  I am anxious to run this program and see indeed if Stinger can find something that my VirusScan 7.0 couldn't find.  Again, thanks for your help and hope to hear from you soon. 

KevanRiley

6 Posts

October 19th, 2004 11:00

Stinger is written by McAfee, it should not interfere at all.  You do not need to install stinger it is just a EXE file that you can run.  When you are done with the obsolete stinger you can just drop it in the recycle bin.

sdmedina1

9 Posts

October 21st, 2004 07:00

Hi, Thanks for all of your help and especially the thouroughness of your suggestions and instructions.  I ran Stinger (which worked great and is something I will definitely use more of in the future).  If there were any viruses I wasn't aware of then hopefully they are gone.  However, my Task Manager is still stubbornly showing that whenever I open and use any programs, especially Internet Explorer, my CPU Usage spikes up and down with % readings reaching as high as 100%.  You have been a great help and I suggested Stinger to my brother which helped cleaned his computer.  But is there any other answers or suggestions as to why these CPU Usage readings are so ridiculously high.  Again, I am not sure but my gut feeling tells me that this is what caused my CPU to restart.  And, if I can just find what file, etc.. is causing this problem then I can make sure it never happens again.  I hope to hear from you soon and again, thanks for all the help.

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