CPU usage at 99% for web browser on some pages

At times my browser became very slow at loading pages which I though might be due to some corruption of the installation, so
I uninstalled completely and did a clean install.
It was working much better until recently it started again.

Windows Task Manager showed that CPU usage for Opera had gone to 98% or 99% and stayed there, which caused the total CPU
usage to go to 100%.

I tested opening several more tabs by selecting 4 or 5 pages in the History manager and opening them all simultaneously.
CPU usage would go to about 47% briefly while loading the pages and quickly fell to from 0% to 3%.

Opening certain pages would cause the CPU usage to spike again.
Example CPU spike: PC World article
Any of those pages did the same thing. After closing the page, the CPU usage drops to 0 to 3 percent.
At times I couldn't even open Windows Task Manager (took a long time) because the CPU was over worked.

I'm using Opera version 11.64, as are some other users, since Opera 12.xx versions are plagued with problems.

I don't know if this might be a problem with Opera or possibly a security issue?

I turned Off Malwarebytes Website Blocking temporarily and also lowered the Avast Web Shield Heuristics Sensitivity
and tested that same page but the CPU spike happened again.

Disabling installed Extensions had no effect.

I have not gone to the Opera forums with this issue, 'cause I wanted to come here first.


My setup:
Windows XP Home SP3 - 1.5GB and 89% free space on the system drive.
Opera 11.64
Privatefirewall 7.0.28.1
Avast 7.0.1466 with automatic updates
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware PRO 1.65.0.1400 with daily auto update.

 

First, try another browser, same pages.
Always good to have a second browser anyway...

Question: are the problem pages loading flash video?

 

Your graphics chipset/card and driver version might be useful, too.

 

Thanks for your replies.

Updated Adobe Flash Player today. I always download and run the latest ver. of the Uninstaller as well as the update.

I had already tried it in Pale Moon which is OK. Just updated to 15.2 today and still OK.
CPU went to 47%-55% for a moment and then dropped to 6%-11%.
Firefox basically the same as Pale Moon. Updated to ver. 16.0.
The video plays fine in both.

K-Meleon is fine but does not even load a 'place holder' for the video.
Internet Explorer 8 loads the page but no video because I don't have the active-X installed.

Video card is ASUS nVidia GeForce 8400 GS 512MB Silent. Temp is OK at 50 ° C.
The driver is GeForce 197.45 WHQL - release date April 13, 2010
I had some trouble with a couple of the later 200 series drivers, so I went back to this last one in the 100 series which has
worked OK. I don't play games so I don't need all of those compatibility and game bug fixes.

 

So is the problem still with you? To read your post, it seems as tho the updates did it. Correct?

 

No, the updates didn't do anything.
I was using the latest version of everything before these updates just came out.

I just checked again and the spike doesn't happen immediately.
It took about fifteen to twenty seconds for that to begin after opening the page. :confused

 

OK, all drivers are up to date? http://majorgeeks.com/SlimDrivers_d6737.html is what I use...

 

I have SlimDrivers installed already.

No, all drivers are not up to date. I have regarded this as a kind of Pandora's box.
In addition to the video driver, SlimDrivers shows these need updating:

Realtek AC'97 audio
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
NVIDIA nForce PCI System Management
NVIDIA Network Bus Enumerator
​

I had already downloaded the audio driver and installed it last weekend, but I thought it was causing problems, so I uninstalled
it and installed the original driver.

I don't trust this program to properly remove the current drivers and then install the update.
I would rather do each of them manually.

I'm concerned that installing the wrong driver will 'break' the system and it will be unusable.
Although I have dealt with the video driver numerous times and the audio driver install went OK, otherwise, I have no experience
with these other drivers.

I can try the audio driver update again and see how that goes.

I would certainly need some coaching with the others.

 

I tested that webpage you linked to in your first post with 3 browsers and there appears to be something going wrong there.

FireFox
50% > 70% and stayed there because the page still hadn't finished loading after one minute, all other pages finish loading quickly.

Comodo Dragon Portable
40% > 50% but the page finished loading quickly and the % went down to almost nothing

Internet Explorer 8 (XP)
40% > 50% then I got a small window with the following message

Clicking OK in the message just brought the window back again immediately so I couldn't close the message window, the webpage or Internet Explorer.
I had to end the iExplorer.exe process
I searched the web for this message and it seems it means there is a javascript error on the site and only they can fix it.

I am not knowledgeable about this and I don't know why different browsers react differently, hopefully someone who knows will explain

 

At this point, as long as you have tested the different browsers for the same amount of time on each page (at least a minute) and Opera is the only one that has the problem, then I would think that it is an Opera problem.

Just to confirm, these problems happen when you load pages with Adobe Flash content in them, correct?

Does this happen on all pages with any type of video, just flash, or just some flash pages?

 

As to Slim Drivers, it coes with backup and restore capabilities to get you back in the event a new driver isn't right for your system or needs.

Tim has a great video tutorial that shows the features and how to use slim Drivers. Worth a look.

As collinsl points out, this may be an Opera problem, that said, your earlier concern about having many drivers out of date: If I had a problem like yours and decided to update drivers, I would only do applicable ones, i.e.video, and do them one at a time and test after each update to see what the status of the problem was.

 

Greetings, mjnc...

FWIW PC World has always had poorly written web pages. The current page that you linked to is giving my Firefox 16.0 fits - the Techhive forum links never load, and the Comments section avatars never load and are extremely jittery. While attempting to load the page, my CPU usage also spikes to 80%-100%.

 

Thanks to everyone for your input.
I thought that if I came here and the right "heads" popped in, I'd get some great info., and that's just what happened.


@MadMal
Thanks for doing those tests and posting the results. Very revealing.
BTW, I'm checking out Comodo Dragon web browser as well as
other DNS servers, including Comodo SecureDNS.

Not sure about that, but did some more testing with different sites.
YouTube was working well, better than earlier in fact.
Tried others such as MSNBC and CBS news and the response varied. None of them produced CPU usage above 55%, and then only very briefly.
Some ranged between 10%-20% and others between 25%-40% approximately.

Sometimes there were pauses during playback which might be due to buffering issues. Very annoying. :banghead
Reducing the browser's disk cache and clearing the cache, sometimes helps with that.

Thanks for the video link. I watched that a few months ago before downloading, but I watched it again.
It's been quite a while since I tried the latest graphics driver, so I'll give it go.
I'll try the audio driver again as well.

Greetings ditto.
Thanks Caliban. That's good to know. I'm sure your machine is more up to date than mine, so if that is happening with you,
then surely there is something wrong there, as MadMal pointed out.

Didn't know that about PC World. I've read their articles in the past and don't recall bad problems with the site.
I think sometimes I end up at the Australian web site.