100% CPU Usage - Can't Find the Problem

[Shade00]

Hey guys, I've got a really annoying problem. I recently upgraded my old T-bird 1ghz with a new A7N266-VM mobo and Athlon XP 1600+ processor. I installed a fresh copy of XP and now it seems that my System process is taking up 100% of my cpu, all the time. Even after rebooting, I still can't get it to work. I've done some research and apparently the most frequent cause of this problem is a bad driver, but I can't find out how to pinpoint the culprit. Any help will be appreciated! It's annoying to have my newer components running slower than my old ones.

Here are my system specs:
Asus A7N266-VM mobo
Athlon XP 1600+
512 Mb PC 2100 DDR
PNY GeForce4 Ti 4200
WD 40gb hard drive

I also have an extra network card installed.

 

[Peacekeeper100]

I just had this problem with an HP printer driver. I started by stopping the system tray items one by one, which fixed my problem. HP had a icon system tray and was the problem. Then I would try to disable each device one by one in the profile. This should work until you get down to the basics. After that it gets a little harder.

 

[LuckeeDogg]

Also....if you have a CPU cooling program installed....CPUIdle in particular....it uses all idle processes to keep the CPU temp down by issuing a HALT command to it...Windows Task Manager misinterprets this idle usage and reports it as 100% CPU Usage, when in fact it truly isn't....if thats the case....don't worry about it....evrything is fine and normal.

Regards

 

[Tal]

Have you done Windows Update to make sure you have the newest drivers for your hardware, and specifically, your processor? -TAL

 

[Shade00]

Peacekeeper: I'll try going with each device and seeing how that goes.

LuckeeDogg: No CPU cooling software is installed. And it's not just tricking Windows... the system runs noticeably slow. If I try to open a second Internet Explorer window it bogs down.

Tal: Yep, I've been through Windows Update, updated drivers for everything I've got. I've tried every version of the mobo's drivers but to no avail. If Peacekeeper's suggestion doesn't work I might be looking at reformatting again. I wanted to avoid that.

If anyone knows a way I can see what the parent/children of the System process are that could help. I need to find out what drivers are taking up my resources inside of the System process. Thanks again guys.

 

[MedicBob]

Open Task Manager by ALT TAB DEL, select task manager then processes and look for the offending program/software.

 

[Shade00]

The offending process is the System process itself. It's up to 99 all the time, and in Task Manager, it shows 100% cpu usage constantly. If some other program was causing the problem, it might not be so difficult, but I fear it may be a device driver.

 

[hobbnet]

I had a similar problem at one point but it turned out to be a software program (not driver related). A program called gmt.exe was causing the problem. Once I ended its process the problem stopped.

HTH