re: 100% CPU Usage all the time
Saturday, October 13, 2007 at 11:54 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by David
(7 messages posted)
Hi Bob Lauer
"...I did not have any anti-virus software or anti-spyware software ...."
Firewall active? No protection + On line games . . . .
Needs to be checked out with a range of updated programs, any cleanups done and then
proper protection installed and used
Other things to check -
Drivers
Event Viewer
Just a possibility - guess you checked the list here -
http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm
I assume system worked normally in the past -
Did you check back on things that happened/ changed recently that may have caused
the problem?
David
On Saturday, October 13, 2007 at 10:28 am, Bob Lauer wrote:
>Before I get to the problem, I'll give a little bit of history. I was on my computer
>playing an online game about 2 weeks ago, when it froze out of the blue. It was
>not responding to anything, so I hit the reset button on the tower and walked away
>for a while. When I came back, the screen was completely black. I hit reset again
>and watched it boot up this time, and I don't remember if it got to the Windows
logo
>screen, but either immediately before or after that screen, it just went black and
>did nothing.
>
>I tried to do a repair with my Windows CD, but after I would specify what Windows
>instance I wanted to repair (I only have one but it asked anyway) I would get an
>IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSOD. After googling that for a while, it looked like it
>might be my RAM that was messed up, so I downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD, booted
>into the Windows environment on the CD, and ran a RAM test for 36 hours, which came
>back with a clean bill of health.
>
>So I restarted my computer again and walked away, and when I came back after a while,
>Windows was miraculously back up again. However, the computer's CPU usage is stuck
>at 100%. I have used process explorer to check things out, and it looks like Explorer.exe
>is taking up about 35-45% of the CPU, and then System.exe takes up whatever is remaining.
> I have checked out all of the subprocesses of System.exe and all of them are in
>the System32 folder and none seem to be suspicious.
>
>I have disconnected every peripheral on my computer, including my video card, sound
>card, all cd drives, and my 2 extra hard drives that were used for data storage.
>
>I did not have any anti-virus software or anti-spyware software because the computer
>is only a month or two old and I was just being lazy getting around to it. I built
>the computer myself, and up until it froze, I never had any problems with it.
>
>So here's a quick rundown of what i've tried and some of my thoughts:
>
>- I have tried to do a Windows Restore and roll back to before this happened, but
>that didn't help.
>- The system becomes slow on boot up when I see the Window Logo screen with the
green
>progress bar below.
>- It is completely unusable. It takes a minute or two just to get the start menu
>to show up after clicking on it. It is extremely, extremely slow.
>- The lowest i've seen the CPU drop down to is 93%, but it's almost always stuck
>at 100%, even when in safe mode.
>- I have run a scan on the hard drive, which did not return any errors.
>- I have 2 Gigs of RAM and I have a RAM monitoring program that tells me that I
have
>plenty of RAM free, so I don't think that's part of the problem.
>- I have opened the computer and checked and double checked every single connection
>to make sure everything is plugged in properly and securely.
>- I have not run HJT, but will get around to it soon (Copying a file over from a
>thumb drive takes about a half hour when it's all said and done.)
>- I have tried booting up with Last Known Good Configuration to no avail.
>- When I boot up into the mini Windows Environment that is on the Universal Boot
>CD that I made (bcd4win.com), it still runs extremely slow and the CPU is still
stuck
>at 100%.
>- I have checked the temperature of my CPU and I don't remember what it is but I
>do remember googling around and seeing that it was in a normal range, so I don't
>believe heat is an issue. Plus, I have a huge fan on it.
>
>I am completely out of ideas. I could try to format my hard drive, but I don't
want
>to lose everything and i'm afraid that it won't solve anything anyway.
>
>I think my next step is going to be disconnecting my hard drive, plugging in one
>of my other hard drives that are used strictly for data, and try to install Windows
>on one of those and see how the system responds.
>
>
>Does anyone have any clue as to what might be wrong? I have looked all over the
>web and none of the suggestions I have seen seem to help me. PLEASE let me know
>if you have any ideas, this is the most frustrating problem!!
>
>Thanks!
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