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?

Maybe the cpu usage tihng is incorrect

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.

How fast is your comptuer?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Ahhh, in google I trust:

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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.

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So it looks as if hardware is your problem.

I would suggest, as others have, to check for any Windows updates you're missing, updates for software programs (some need patches to work properly under XP) and install the lastest drivers for all of the hardware on your computer. It sounds as if there is a problem with either a hardware driver (since it's pretty constant) or possibly one of the programs you have installed which is running in the background (such as a firewall, anti-virus program, etc.). Do that, and if all else fails, you could do what some others have suggested and just back up your stuff, wipe the drive and start from scratch starting with XP.

AJ

Yeah If I was you I would backup all your important work files, Mp3's and whatever else you need and wipe the hard disk. Even if you have the upgrade version of windows xp you can still do a clean install. Has long you own a real(not any images)version of either windows ME 98 or 2000 the install of windows xp will ask you to put the old version in to make sure you do really own a previous copy. I have never tried this out myself, but according to several sources this does work(Pc mag over here)

Wow! I wasn't expecting this many responses. Thank you all for taking the time to reply. I'm going to try to respond in an orderly fashion, forgive me if it doesn't work. I'm still a newbie to this posting thing :) . I've modified the actual quotes slightly but the links were left in tact so you can view the original posts.

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Originally posted here by Darksnake
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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?

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I have all of the current patches from Windows Update. I check for new ones once a week unless I hear of a new one in between. I haven't contacted Microsoft yet, I was hoping to find the answer here first.

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Originally posted here by wyverspur
Did you literally do an upgrade, or a wipe and clean install of XP

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

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I did a fresh install. I've heard too many horror stories about upgrades.

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Originally posted here by The_Magistrate
... 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.

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I checked all the hardware the other night to make sure it seemed in working order. All of the connections were good. I didn't shake the HD (thought that was bad?) but I may give it a shot if all else fails.

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Originally posted here by thesecretfire
Ahhh, in google I trust:


So it looks as if hardware is your problem.

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I let Windows handle the drivers that were installed. I'll start searching for the drivers provided by the hardware manufacturers and see if installing them helps at all.

If all else fails, I will try reinstalling. It's such a fresh install (about a month) that I was hoping to avoid it. Oh well, Thanks again for all of the input!

BTW -- It's running fine today, idling at about 2-5%. Go figure... :rolleyes:

Oh so one day it runs slow and the other day it is normal... That's a new feature for M$...Never know how it is going to run from one day to the next... It keeps life exciting for you...

I read somewhere (sorry don't know were) about this same issue and some ms geek said that if anything is done (dropping down start menu or something) no mather what, win xp uses the whole cpu capacity for just that task. So only for a milimilimilimilisec (ms :p) it uses 100% and then immediatly drops back. So that's why if you do anything it shoots to 50% because it just came back from 100%.
About the continiously hanging at 55%: There must be some programm or task running. It has to be something you installed (win xp, or anything else later installed), because (I think) your system didn't have the problems before you installed win xp. Ms isn't so damn stupid to make an upgrade so bad... OK their cpu/memory management isn't always as good as *nix (altho it comes closer), but the ms crew won't ***** it up like this...