Cpu usage at 58-70%

First of all, hello to everyone!

My gf has a dell with a 2.8ghz prescott. My question is that her computer runs slower than it should and when I check with task manager it seems her cpu is running at at least 60-70% at idle. The machine cant even play games now because when it does it goes up to 100% and locks up or runs extremely slow. Whats going on here? Anybody know the fix? _thanks!

 

Which process exactly is taking the 58 to 70% that you mentioned?

 

It seems to be the system Idle process taking up at least 45% any way to cut down on this?

 

The System Idle Process gives you what % is Free, it's not using any CPU. Since that shows %45 then you have a total of %55 being used by something else. That's where you should look.

 

System idle process is just a count of the amount of cpu that is idleing in english its the amount of cpu that is not doing anything so it sounds like 45% of your cpu is not doing anything. But yes, what processes are using so much of your system. Maybe you can cut those programs out and free the system up. I know on my old desktop upstairs If i try to be connected to the internet and play games it is slow but as soon as i shut down the av, firewall, and disable my wireless internet connection it works fine.
-the new tech guy

 

Oh sorry about that auggie i didnt see you come and post as i was typing my reply!
-the new tech guy

 

hmmm its running fine now... guess I'll see what I can shut down next time it happens

 

What you should do is open your Task Manager, select the Process tab and left click on CPU. This will sort all of the apps relative to resource usage then you can readily ID which processes are using what % of resources, it will always add upto 100%.

 

When I want to check out running processes I use

Process Explorer.http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4566

 

awesome, thanks