High cpu usage

[paulsiu]

My girlfriend's Toshiba 1805-s207 is slower than expected. I know that a Celeron 1.3 Ghz is PIII class machine, but my mom has one and it's snappier than this. I notice that the machine has unusally high cpu utiliziation. At idle, I notice a cpu utilization of 10% or so. This is really high.

At first, I thought it was memory. I upgraded her machine to 512 Mb and it was faster but it still had high cpu utilization. I tried installing Spyware remover and it did get rid of some of the spyware. Virus check also return nothing.

One possible clue is that the cpu fan is running all the time. The last time I check, the processor was running at 70C occasionally. A friend of mine thinks this is normal, but I don't think so. Is the computer slow because the cpu is throttling back? The Celeron 1.3 Ghz is low power, but is not a laptop processor, so I am not sure how it throttles.

Ideas? I am stumped.


Paul

 

[LTC8K6]

Run task manager and see what's taking up CPU cycles.

It's probably a mobile celeron chip.

 

[mongoloido]

I'm far from bright for this forum, but I always run through the basics of virus scan, spyware scan, hijackthis, defrag (while giving myself a headache tracking down everything from the hijackthis log ). You've probably done all that if you're talking hardware, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. Metaphorically speaking, sometimes the lost car keys really are in your hand.

 

[paulsiu]

Did Check the task manager for rogue task and to see who's hogging all of the resources. Unfortunately, I do not see anything strange. What I do find strange is that normal task take up such a large chunk of cpu cycles. Task Manager for example should not take up 4-7% of cpu time.

I have defrag, virtus check, checked startup, and services. I have not play around with hijackthis since I have never heard of it. I do some google to see if I can use it to find anything.

I did notice a blurb in one of the cpu spec that said if a Celeron hit 70C, it will lock into idle mode until it cools down (this is why the cpu won't burn up even if you run it without a heat sink. Good luck getting any real work done though).

I didn't think it was a Mobile Celeron because it did not speedstep, but I found out that no Celeron from that period have speedstep. The Toshiba software does allow you to set the cpu clock to low and high. This mean the processor is a mobile or that Celerons are unlocked. I guess I have to install a cpu utility to figure it out.

 

[Calin]

Could you try and install a different heat sink and fan. The task manager should use less CPU, try upgrading the video card driver (I saw higher CPU use while task manager was on screen on low end video cards). Maybe it is just the thermal paste between the processor and heat sink
Also, the performance might be hurt if your hard drive is in PIO mode (PIO transfers are slower and use more CPU)

 

[RelaxTheMind]

"some" of the spyware? in what sense did all the spyware not get removed?

 

[paulsiu]

Good idea about the IDE drivers. I did a check and it indicate that the drive was running in DMA mode and the CD-ROM is in PIO. I think that's pretty normal. The drive has been defragged and it is still slow. I am going to see if I can remove some of the other stuff like the virus protector to see if they are at fault. I'll also check if they have a new video driver.

Paul