high CPU usage leads to little performance UPDATE: Definitley not a virus....Please Help

[BHeemsoth]

I have been noticing my comp has been running bf1942 really crappy lately (under 5 fps). I ran 3dmark and got a score of 5,580, almost half of what i used to get.

I am running a bfgtech ti4200 128mb, athlon xp1700, 512mb pc2100, on xp pro, and the detonator 41.09 drivers. This problem just came up suddenly....is my card bad?

Thanks for all your help.

EDIT: wow it gets worse.... I think im having some major problems.

Check out my PCMARK2k2 scores:

CPU:2875
Mem:2772
HDD:817

Again this is a 1700xp, ti4200, 512mb of pc2100 on a 300w psu...



Is my system underpowered...or is it something worse?



EDIT 2: another thing...my cpu usage is almost always at 100% even when the only thing running is AIM


Is it possible that my mobo is dying???? Im just taking stabs in the dark here.

Thanks in advance,

-Brian



EDIT: I WIPED THE WHOLE SYSTEM, INCLUDING THE MBR AND I AM STILL HAVING THE SAME PROBLEMS....ANY IDEAS?

 

[fkloster]

lol u think those are bad scores....light up the new test for a spin!! :Q

 

[human2k]

I have a similiar setup, bu xp1700@1.84ghz and Radeon 9700 pro softmod.......mines does 12.5K+ easily.............5K is extremely low for your system, you sure you turned off AA/FSAA?? Or are you running 3dmarks 2003!

 

[BHeemsoth]

I am running 2k1, and yes AA is turned off. I just put in a raid setup last week which means i have 2 optical drives, 3 hard drives and all my other components on the 300w psu. Is it possible the card isnt getting enough power?

-Brian

 

[Cat]

Post the url to your test, so we can see the individual scores for each test...and any other settings that might be the culprit.

 

[BHeemsoth]

wow it gets worse.... I think im having some major problems.

Check out my PCMARK2k2 scores:

CPU:2875
Mem:2772
HDD:817

Again this is a 1700xp, ti4200, 512mb of pc2100 on a 300w psu...

this makes me sick

Is my system underpowered...or is it something worse?

 

[BHeemsoth]

I would post links to my scores, but their site is so bogged down with the new release its not even funny.

 

[BHeemsoth]

someone help....

 

[BHeemsoth]

come on people....

another thing...my cpu use is almost always at 100% even when the only thing running is AIM

any ideas?

 

[arynn]

Have you run a virus scan?

Which OS are you running? If it's Windows 2000 or XP, look at the process that is using all of the power. Which is it?

 

[BHeemsoth]

Originally posted by: arynn
Have you run a virus scan?

Which OS are you running? If it's Windows 2000 or XP, look at the process that is using all of the power. Which is it?

thats another thing...when i go into task manager i cant get to the processes portion of it. I can only see what software is running. The only thing visible is the list of programs and the end task and switch to buttons..its weird.

BTW im running xp

 

[arynn]

I would run a virus scan with an up to date virus definition file.

It sounds like you have a problem with Windows if you can't look at your process list.

I would think the problem is likely software related and before attempting to diagnose a potential hardware problem, I would recommend a clean install of Windows.

If you just updated some device drivers, that could be the problem. You may want to try and "roll back" to older drivers with which the system was working better.

 

[beatle]

Something is definitely wrong with Windows if you can't view your processes. Another vote for a virus scan and possibly a reinstall if necessary.

 

[BHeemsoth]

I ran an updated virus scan and nothing came up. Anything else i can try before formatting?

 

[paralazarguer]

You said that your CPU usage was at 100%. Go into msconfig and make sure that the startup tab is empty. Also check the registry...erm...I"m at work right now and don't have privelledges to view the registry but I think it's something like hkey_local_machine, software, microsoft, windows, current version, run-runonce-etc. Make sure it's all cleaned out.

 

[Brian48]

The fact that you only have limited access to the view the services running in the background tells me that it's an issue with your access rights. Are you signed in as the administrator or is your user profile setup to have administrator rights? The fact that your CPU is at 100% tells me that there is something running the background and this no doubt is attributing to your low performance. Just because your viruscan didn't turn anything up, doesn't mean that you haven't had a worm go through and damaged your system.

At this point, I wouldn't trust the OS. Back up your data and reinstall the OS. The time it would take for you to troubleshoot and clean up this mess would probably take more time.

 

[bgeh]

Originally posted by: rpbri2886
I have been noticing my comp has been running bf1942 really crappy lately (under 5 fps). I ran 3dmark and got a score of 5,580, almost half of what i used to get.

I am running a bfgtech ti4200 128mb, athlon xp1700, 512mb pc2100, on xp pro, and the detonator 41.09 drivers. This problem just came up suddenly....is my card bad?

Thanks for all your help.

EDIT: wow it gets worse.... I think im having some major problems.

Check out my PCMARK2k2 scores:

CPU:2875
Mem:2772
HDD:817

Again this is a 1700xp, ti4200, 512mb of pc2100 on a 300w psu...



Is my system underpowered...or is it something worse?



EDIT 2: another thing...my cpu usage is almost always at 100% even when the only thing running is AIM


Is it possible that my mobo is dying???? Im just taking stabs in the dark here.

Thanks in advance,

-Brian

are you running any DC projects(i.e.F@H,S@H)?
they will take up all the cpu power

 

[BHeemsoth]

I formated my main hard drive and i am still getting similar problems. A fully updated norton is still turning up nothing...

Any ideas?

 

[paralazarguer]

You may have a boot sector virus. You cannot get rid of it by simply formatting. Boot from a win 98 floppy and then fdisk all of your partitions away. Make sure to choose option 4. to make sure that no partitions are defined. This isn't enough, though. Now, drop back to dos by hitting escape enough times (don't reboot) and type "fdisk /mbr" This will clear the master boot record. Now reboot and install windows.
Good Luck.

 

[MedicBob]

Originally posted by: rpbri2886

Originally posted by: arynn
Have you run a virus scan?

Which OS are you running? If it's Windows 2000 or XP, look at the process that is using all of the power. Which is it?

thats another thing...when i go into task manager i cant get to the processes portion of it. I can only see what software is running. The only thing visible is the list of programs and the end task and switch to buttons..its weird.

BTW im running xp

Double click in the grey box area. That will open the default Windows processes list with all the tabs.

 

[chizow]

As others have mentioned, make sure you don't have some nasty virus/worm eating up your cycles (not to mention corrupting all your files :Q) and check background processes. Run something like Ad-aware to see what TSR-type spyware might be causing problems as well as your anti-virus software. Also, make sure you aren't running Kazaa. I don't even want to get into how many m00ks were running Kazaa while playing WC3 and wondering why they were lagging every 5 seconds :|

Other than that, do you have any kind of thermal CPU throttling enabled?

Chiz

 

[BHeemsoth]

i ran adaware6 and found 6 instances of spyware. My cpu usage tends to be lower...let me go run pcmark to see if it improved at all.

 

[BHeemsoth]

cpu scores are hovering between 3300-3700...is this ok for my xp1700?

ram scores are coming in around 3k...is this ok?

 

[PCMarine]

I think it's time to reformat (And like stated above) Clear out the master boot record just to be safe.

 

[BHeemsoth]

ummm... I just reformated...what good would it do to do it again?