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Thread: WinXP High CPU Usage

  1. #1
    Junior Member
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    WinXP High CPU Usage

    Greetings,

    I hope this is the right place to post this since it didn't seem to fit anywhere else.

    I recently upgraded my computer from WinME to WinXP Pro. It's a 1.2 ghz AMD Athlon with 512mb RAM. Since the upgrade, I've noticed that the CPU usage tends to idle between 55% and 65% even after being off all day. I get home from work, boot up and the CPU usage displays at least 55% right away. Some days (rarely) it will idle between 0% and 5% which I'm guessing is pretty normal. I don't have anything other than AIM loading at startup. I've checked the registry and all of the system files that load programs at startup, but I don't see anything out of the ordinary.

    I did a full scan with one of the online scanners as well as the AVG scanner and found nothing. AdAware didn't turn up anything either.

    I've done some searching on Google but nothing I found helped. According to the Windows Task Manager, there isn't anything else running on bad days that would explain the high CPU usage. I downloaded TaskInfo2002 and it displays a couple of extra processes that aren't shown in the Windows Task Manager. The one that caught my eye was "Interrupts Time" which is idling around 45%. At first I thought maybe it was a hardware conflict, but all my devices check out ok.

    I'm at a loss, anyone have any ideas? Has anyone else had similar problems?

  2. #2
    Maybe the cpu usage tihng is incorrect

  3. #3
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    There's noticable lag on the "bad" days. Everything loads much slower than on "good" days. For instance, if I try to load one of my games it takes twice as long and gameplay is very choppy. This leads me to believe that what is being reported is indeed correct.

  4. #4

    How fast is your comptuer?

  5. #5
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    I'm not sure the answer to your problem duncare, but I have to laugh when they say that XP is suppose to run great for older systems, because bla bla.... Well I had XP Pro running on my P3 550 and boy when I first installed it...well it was kinda nice and speedy sorta. then within a short while the thing just went boom. slow slow and I did all the same things you did and no answers so I am curious what it could be. Then I just made myself a new system and kinda forgot about the old bugger, might have to tinker with it again.

  6. #6
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    I am currently running Windows XP home edition and also have the " Interrupts Time " process running, except that mine is called " + Interrupts Time Placeholder ". Unlike yours mine hardly uses more than 1% of cpu if it even uses it at all. I would suggest installing all xp updates to see if that fixes the problem. If not you could always try reinstalling xp ( how fun ). Have you searched microsoft's knowledge base or tried contacting them about the problem?
    <chsh> I've read more interesting technical discussion on the wall of a public bathroom than I have at AO at times

  7. #7
    Senior Member cwk9's Avatar
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    I Know my cpu useage goes from 3% to 33% when ever I click on the start menu. Explaine to me why it take 198MZ just the run the freaken start menu. Windows is a memory hog and it get more bloated with every version.
    Its not software piracy. I’m just making multiple off site backups.

  8. #8
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    Did you literally do an upgrade, or a wipe and clean install of XP, I have always had bad experiences with upgrades, I have yet to see m$ do one right.

    I have had a similar experience upgrading from 98 to 2000 at work. Except in my case, I could open task manager and watch the CPU usage meter "toggle" from 1% to 50% every 2 secs.

    IMHO I recommend a clean install. Upgrades just are too finikey.

  9. #9
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    I had a similar problem with my box last week. I would startup, and XP would take about 8 mins to load. Programs wouldn't load at all, and there was a constant 89% CPU usage, and 443/512 MB memory usage. Turns out I had a bad HD that seemed alright. I could access the file on it, but it was faulty because of broken hardware. I didn't know it was the problem till I opened it up and shook it a little. I could hear stuff moving around inside and scraping metal on metal.

    The HD wasn't under warrenty, so I lost all the stuff on it, but my comp has been fine so far. Double check your hardware. Make sure evreything is tight in their slots, and all cables are secure. Even little things make computers go screwey.

  10. #10
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    Ahhh, in google I trust:
    Processor - % CPU Interrupts/Sec measures hardware interrupts. If processor time exceeds 90% and interrupts/time exceeds 15%, check for a poorly wirtten driver (bad drivers can generate excessive interrupts) or else upgrade the CPU.
    So it looks as if hardware is your problem.
    Elen alcarin ar gwath halla ná engwar.

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