Why would CPU be running at, or near, 100% all of the time?

The unit has been extremely slow lately. Even local programs take forever to load and run.

I looked at the performance in the Task Manager and it shows the CPU running at, or near, 100% all of the time, even at idle.

Could a virus or other bug cause this?

 

Try Process Explorer, may give you a hint or the hopefully the culprit.

 

I have Process Explorer but I am not really aware of what it all means.

The System Idle Process is taking up 70-80% of the CPU usage at all times. I don't know what can be done about that, though.

 

Ahah!!! This is a common misconception as 'System Idle Process' means exactly that! Your CPU is working at %20 to %30 which is pretty high if nothing is running but still acceptable and don't worry about the 'Idle'.

Having said that, has your machine suddenly staRTED RUNNING SLOW? Have you updated or installed anything recently? Post a screenshot of Process Explorer and let's see what's running.

 

I see others posting screen shots but, while I do know how to capture one, I don't know how to post it. I'll look around to see how to do it.

 

Checked the FAQ page on Attachments and Images but it doesn't mention screen shots. Tried to insert the image into Word and it came up at over 5megs for a single page.

I'll check out in the ether and see how it's done.

 

Here is the image.

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/6480/procexp.jpg

 

There's not much there to complain about, maybe FF is somewhat high but still shouldn't cause problems. You'll have to look elsewhere I'm afraid.

 

The only thing that I have installed lately was a new printer (HP Deskjet D1660). I downloaded a couple of programs to see if they would solve the problem by tweaking, defragging, and compressing the registry. That did nothing.

I wanted to uninstall the former printer's files but the unit stated that if I did certain other things would not run.

 

You might have a virus, try downloading Malwarebytes...

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

It's free and it can kick any viruses butt! :-D

 

I have run AdAware, CCleaner, Malwarebytes, Cablenut, RegScrubXP, and RegCompact. I have also run FreeRam XP Pro, in case the memory was low and Software Informer to see if there were any programs which needed updating.

I got rid of a bunch of old software, some of which came with the unit when I bought it new. I purged out registry entries that were obsolete because of deleting old programs and files.

I will run Defraggler tonight but I have never seen a performance issue that was improved by very much after a defrag.

 

Well this is a long shot but, you could try to update the drivers to the printer you bought, like I said, LONG shot though. :confused