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Laptop constantly at 100 CPU usage

RaggaholicRaggaholic Registered User regular
edited May 2009 in Help / Advice Forum
Ok, here's the rundown. I bought an Acer Aspire 5515 because I got it new for a ridiculous price. When I got it, I did a full wipe of the drive, fresh install of Vista Ultimate, driver installation, and all was right with the world. The problem is that, it seems like no matter what I'm doing, my CPU usage will shoot to 100% and my new laptop is worse than my old one as far as getting things done. Movies lag, it takes forever to open folders with pictures in them, etc. For instance, right now my CPU usage is at 100% and I'm installing drivers for a printer.

My comp specs are AMD Athlon 2650e, 3GB of RAM, ATI Radeon X1200. I don't have many programs installed and hardly anything is running in the background (only thing on the bar near the clock are the ATI display, the sidebar, Sync Center, OneNote, and Symantec).

Help?

Raggaholic on

Posts

  • rfaliasrfalias Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    Go to the task manager, click processes tab and sort by CPU usage and see what is at (near) 100%
    If it is, something will show up and it should give you the process name, and a good place for us to start.


    Edited for clarity

    rfalias on
  • RaggaholicRaggaholic Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    Alright, i've checked in Task Manager, and there is nothing really pushing it up there. The top three will be explorer.exe, taskmgr.exe, and dwm.exe. Now that I've been making this post, firefox.exe is up there. The thing is, they aren't using nearly 100% if we just add up all the CPU numbers. The top one will be in the 30s, next two in the teens, and then the next six or so under 10 with most under 5.

    The numbers keep fluctuating, though. I find it curious that wmplayer.exe is taking up so much RAM, when it's not even open.

    Raggaholic on
  • jeepinryanjeepinryan Registered User regular
    edited May 2009
    In the task manager, did you click the button that says "show processes from all users?" There is a possibility that another account (default admin account, system accounts, etc) has something running.

    The next thing to try would be a good anti-virus and spyware check. I think some viruses out there can hide themselves fairly well and may not register in the task manager, or conveniently name their task something that looks legit like "explore.exe" instead of "explorer.exe"

    jeepinryan on
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