High CPU Usage when moving windows around or scrolling through windows

[thereds]

Any ideas on why the CPU usage goes up to a 100% immediately when I start moving windows (say an explorer window) around or when I scroll through webpages? Task manager doesn't show me anything useful - just the window showing high cpu usage. The window doesn't have to be an explorer window, it could be a windows explorer window or any other application window.

Laptop is a P4 IBM Thinkpad running winxp pro with 256 mb of RAM.

Suggestions? Thoughts?

Burn the computer?

 

[Woodie]

The vid card is too weak. (my best guess)

I had some "similar" issues, using alpha-channel blending on a Compaq system w/o a dedicated video card. So, the CPU worked extra hard, doing the transparency/alpha-channel crunching, and you get slower overall response.

 

[CTho9305]

If your video driver supports hardward acceleration, then regardless of the card, the CPU usage will be pretty low. If your driver doesn't, then regardless of the card, the CPU usage will be very high.

The only thing you could try is a newer driver, and make sure you have the graphics acceleration slider to "full acceleration" (or wahtever the max is). The slider is somewhere in the advanced options for the display properties.

Even if there is no fix, as long as you don't feel any slowdowns, I wouldn't worry about it. A workaround is to disable "show window contents while dragging".