Problems with cpu usage spikes

[nuervana]

I am having a problem with spikes on my task manager. im noy sure what process is the source of the spikes because all of them are pretty normal and not spiking. but the spikes are hitting the roof and it messes up whatever im doing when it happens.
So i guess what im asking is that if anyone has had this problem before....how the hell did you get rid of it or what could be the cause?
I guess as information goes i should share with you recent events for a better understanding of what might be going on. I recently got a trojan (backdoor.exe) from a program and ended up having to reformat and start from scratch. new windows xp home and all.....then i redownloaded almost eveything i could think of that i used before including my games and music. But i left out all of the things i didnt use so my computer would run better and with less work.
But for some reason this spiking started and is freezing my computer for short periods of time every like 15 secondsand its sucking nuts. Please help me if you know what is causing or could be causing this because i am SO computer illiterate that it hurts so i'll never figure it out on my own.


thank you,
Chris

 

[AJPatel]

What trojan was it? Did you look it up on Norton to see if it had any other effects? 🙂

 

[Smilin]

If you want to track this down you're going to have to stop using task manager and start using performance monitor.

setup perfmon to monitor cpu usage of processes (NOT processor). You'll be able to pin down the culprit in a matter of seconds.

 

[nuervana]

I do know that the trojan was the BACKDOOR.NETDEVIL trojan and i beleive i finally found what it was but it would seem rather odd if it were. i noticed that if i didn't have windows messenger going then it didnt happen so i'd imagine it was that so i just deleted windows messenger and got trillian and it seems fine now. 🙂



thanks for the advice though,
Chris