CPU usage at 100%?

Ok, i dont know what the deal is. While im not doing anything, the task manager shows my usage at around 10-15%. But as soon as i do anything, like open IE, or run a game like WoW, it shoots up to 100% and lags terribly. I've ran adware/spyware removal tools, defragged my HD, and ran a virus scan, still no improvement. Anyone have any clue on how to fix this?

 

Maximize your task manager window and then click on the column head for "CPU" twice. This should put the process or processes that are gobbling up most of your CPU cycles at the top of the list. Try doing this with several different programs running to see if the same process or processes show up each time as cpu hogs. Then post back and let us know what those processes are.

And what security programs are you running? Which Anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall do you have? Are they up to date? Did you use any other programs to check for spyware problems?

 

My virus software is McAfee Security Center, spyware/adware, i use Adaware 2007 and Spybot. I think the firewall is either through Windows or McAfee... possibly both.

 

If you are running two of any security software, shut down one of them, two should never be running at the same time. And it would explain why(if it's the firewall) all the programs that you mentioned are internet related.

 

which do you think would be better to keep running? or is it just a matter of preference?

 

If it's a matter of firewalls, kill the Windows firewall. (IMO)

Windows F/W doesn't offer outbound protection.

Never known firewalls to spike CPU usage though - you might still be well advised by following Eezak's recommend: post the name of the process that's taking up 100% of your CPU time.

 

alright, well, im at work at the moment, so i'll have to check it out when i get home. Thanks for the info =D

 

The firewall wouldn't be what's causing it, the conflict between two of them plus a program trying to run through the internet would do that.

Oh, and ditch IE, get FF or Opera.

 

confusedconfusedconfused:confused

Please explain.

 

I believe what this poster meant to say was, if you are running two OF THE SAME KIND of security software programs, shut one of them down. Even that needs a bit more explanation.

If you're running two firewalls and one of them is the Windows firewall, I think nearly all here would agree that you should turn off the Windows firewall -- assuming your other firewall is a known, good quality firewall such as ZoneAlarm or Comodo (only 2 examples, there are others). And the same is true of anti-virus software -- you should only have one running -- whether AVG, Avast, Norton, McAfee, Bit Defender or whatever -- only one of those anti-virus programs should be actively protecting your system. Then there's anti-spyware. There are some free anti-spyware programs that will only examine your system when you request and hunt for (and maybe remove) spyware. There is also anti-spyware which actively monitors your system and attempts to prevent spyware from installing and running on your system. Like anti-virus software, you should only have one anti-spyware program installed to actively detect and block spyware. It's fine if you have additional anti-spyware which only starts up and scans your system for spyware already installed but doesn't actively monitor and guard your system against spyware.

I certainly don't want to discourage you from using the fine anti-malware guide and tools the other posters have provided links for. (I cleaned up a friend's badly gummed up system with chaslang's help in the malware forum here only a couple of months back myself and really appreciate the help I got here then and on a number of other occasions.) But before you do all that, and without needing to install additional process monitoring software, I think it might be worthwhile to check your task manager/processes tab and sort (by clicking on the cpu column once or twice) and see which process or processes are using up most or all of your cpu cycles. Post those results here and see then what others here believe to be the most efficient way to proceed.

I thought that since you already are familiar with the Task Manager it will be easy to get some quick info about which processes are overloading your cpu and whether there's any change in those dominant running processes when you run different programs. Malware certainly can't be ruled out as there's lots of nasty stuff out there and no single anti-spyware tool can find it all.