CPU Usage at 100% all the time

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March 22nd, 2003, 04:03 AM
Big Booger

CPU Usage at 100% all the time

My neighbor had me come over and help out his PC. He is now running windows XP PRo ( I deleted windows 2000), installed by yours truly. His PC is an old IBM Aptiva with 192MB of ram, an AMD 488Mhz CPU, 6 gigabyte Quantum Fireball HDD, Voodoo 2 Graphics card, onboard sound, etc...

I could go into how long it took me to find drivers for his 1995 hardware.. but I won't, just know that I spent about 8 hours working on his PC last night and yesterday.

Well, XP does fine, but it uses his CPU at 100% all the time.. I have shutdown every service imagineable. Hit cntrl alt del, and minimized all of the services down to about 12 or 13...

It doesn't matter what I shutdown, something else always uses the CPU at 100%... which bogs his computer down to a crawl. It takes about 4 minutes for IE to load...

Anyone have any ideas?

I have adjusted his Pagefile to reflect the amount of RAM he has available. Typically he has about 80-100MB of Free ram available. I went into the properties of My Computer and adjusted windows for max performance. I made the system restore file very small to conserve his HDD as much as possible, I disabled Hibernation.

I edited his IE temp folder size to about 80MB, deleted all the cookies etc...

I defragged his HDD, so that it had 0% defragmentation, it is still at 100%.

The only thing I didn't try was changing the GUI back to look like windows 2K... and he doesn't want to change it back..

ANy ideas on what could be causing the CPU to run at 100% regardless of what is running in the processes panel of task manager?

I haven't a clue.
March 22nd, 2003, 04:42 AM
Conan

Did you install Antivirus and Firewall? In my previous setups, Norton Firewall would cause 100% CPU usage.
March 22nd, 2003, 04:53 AM
Big Booger

installed Norton AntiVirus. But I disabled it and the CPU still stayed at 100%.
March 22nd, 2003, 04:56 AM
Conan

It seems that the only way is another reformat and then monitor the CPU usage everytime a new program is installed.:(
March 22nd, 2003, 04:58 AM
Big Booger

That would be nearly impossible for me :D It took 8 hours to get everything installed, from his printer, video camera, USB modem, sound card, voodoo 2 card, etc..

I mean from teh fresh installation, it was 100%.. even before I installed a single program.

I think it has something to do with a system service, but I am not 100% sure.
March 22nd, 2003, 05:43 AM
Conan

Quote:

Originally posted by Big Booger
That would be nearly impossible for me :D It took 8 hours to get everything installed, from his printer, video camera, USB modem, sound card, voodoo 2 card, etc..

I mean from teh fresh installation, it was 100%.. even before I installed a single program.

I think it has something to do with a system service, but I am not 100% sure.

It must be a driver then causing it since you mentioned the hardware is from 1995.:eek:

Might be connected to his USB ports since USB then wasn't natively supported by Windows during 1995.
March 22nd, 2003, 06:09 AM
Big Booger

I will try to disconnect all the USB connected devices. Hopefully that will work for him.

BUt his modem connects via USB... so he will definitely need it to surf the internet.
March 22nd, 2003, 06:27 AM
phishhead

what about disable the monitoring for the restore function I now it constantly monitors the system...also disable the hibernate.
March 22nd, 2003, 07:04 AM
Reverend

Have you updated it to SP1 ?
March 22nd, 2003, 07:43 AM
SupaStar

Just curious as to whether you updated the BIOS...

A lot of older machines that I have upgraded to XP have had issues until their BIOS has been flashed.

Just a thought... :)

Me thinks you are going to spend some time with that re-format...LOL :p

*EDIT*

BTW - Does the problem still occur in safe mode?
March 22nd, 2003, 10:13 AM
Conan

Quote:

Originally posted by SupaStar

BTW - Does the problem still occur in safe mode?

Nice question for you Boogs.
March 22nd, 2003, 10:22 AM
Big Booger

Couple of things to try.

I did disable Hibernate, and I minimized the size of system restore... I might get him to disable it totally.

I don't want to re-install it.

I installed the XP, which had already been slipstreamed with SP1. :D

I will definitely look at a BIOS upgrade.. but I am afraid to do it on his machine.. if done wrong.. bam, I have to get him a new PC. :(

but I will look into it.
March 24th, 2003, 01:07 AM
SupaStar

Yeah be careful if you decide on a BIOS flash. It could spell disaster...

How about the safe mode issue? Does the problem still occur in safe mode?
March 24th, 2003, 01:45 AM
Big Booger

Will find out soon if safemode works or not. I hardly see him except on weekends.
:D
March 24th, 2003, 03:56 AM
efc

Thought I would spend some time on this. Searched internet for the problem and found that it is not an unusual problem. There is no consistant fix.

Here are a few things that seemed to work:

Open Task Manager to see if you can identify the process causing the problem. If so kill the process to see what happens.

There was one instance where an old PCTEL modem in a Dell was the problem. They couldn't find a driver that would work, so changed out the modem for a hardware modem and solved the problem.

One was strange so I will provide the information as posted: After trying various solutions,
i suceeded by changing the following registry entry:
hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows current version\run
change pctvoice to be
xpctspk.exe
June 15, 2002 03:14 AM GMT [ unassigned ]
i was having a similar problem (explorer suddenly useing 99% cpu), i am connected to a network of over 100 pc's, i had a folder (named 'shared' but not actually shared) that contained 3 shared folders and heaps of sub-folders. these 3 folders were originally on my desktop but i put them in the 'shared' folder to neaten things up a bit, thats when the problem started, if i so much as touched the 'shared' folder or any sub-folders, or any files in them, then the cpu would shoot up to 99% and stay there until a reboot. It wasnt a virus (i ran a scan), or anyone accesing my hdd (happened when network cable was unplugged). It took me a week before i tried putting the 3 shared folders back on the desktop, and deleting the 'shared' folder, and now the problem is gone, i havent had any worries for the last day, so i assume its gone.
hope this helps a little.

Also know that more than one incident involved Explorer.exe. This is one of the more promising posts:
If Internet Explorer (IE) 6 is slowing to a crawl and/or hanging and starts to use 100 percent of CPU time it may well be a corruption of the "Temporary Internet Files folder". In particular, trying to delete Temporary Internet files via Tools, Internet Options or other privacy software seems to trigger this behavior. Also, attempts to view files in the Temporary Internet Files folder may show the folder as already empty when it is not. This behavior occurs because the Temporary Internet files database is corrupt.

The Temporary Internet files aren't really files but entries in %systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat. Deleting that file solves the problem. This same problem has occured for NT users and the fix works for XP.

1. Open a command prompt window on the desktop (Start/Run/command).

2. Exit IE and Windows Explorer (iexplore.exe and explorer.exe, respectively, in Task Manager, i.e - Ctrl-Alt-Del/Task Manager/Processes/End Process for each).

3. Use the following command exactly from your command prompt window to delete the corrupt file:

C:\>del "%systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat"

4. Restart Windows Explorer with Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del/Task Manager/Applications/New Task/Browse/C:\Windows\explorer.exe[or your path]) or Shutdown/Restart the computer from Task Manager.

Good Luck big guy.
February 26th, 2004, 23:44 PM
Big Booger

Well I know this is an old thread, but my neighbor called me last night needing help. So I went down. Low and behold for about 6 months he has been using that PC with the CPU running 100% the whole time. We tried many of your fixes Efc. None of them got to the root. That is until I looked at the back of his PC again.

Seems he had ADSL connected. But it wasn't a traditional connection through an ethernet port. It was connecting over USB. Well, I unplugged it. Then I checked tast manager for 1 minute no change but after 2-3 minutes the processor went back down to normal levels. The usage dropped. So we plugged back the USB connection from the modem, and bam, it went back up to 100%.

I had a spare 100mbit Linksys NIC. I got it for him, installed it, plugged the ethernet cable directly into the Linksys NIC. Checked taskmanager. and Viola. It works normal now.

I unindexed all the files on his HDD, ran a disk defrag, and put the theme back to windows Classic, to make it run better for him. I think he was happy.

Case closed :D