Up to 100% (!!!) CPU in use when only running ICQ, and IE?!!!

[HappyFace]

This post is a continuance of my thread concerning bad DVD playback.

I flashed the BIOS to the newest version, and everything seems to be working better. CPU usage before the update often averaged 90% when only a couple desktop type programs were in use! :Q Now it averages about 65% CPU useage, and 137MB of ram in use. Although it's much improved, the cpu usage seems really high considering the few programs I have running. I do have all the Windows background programs running, but turning them off really doesn't seem to improve CPU performance at all. In fact, when closing most of my background programs (ctrl + alt + del), I get worse performace! CPU runs at up to 100% usage with these few programs open... something is definately wrong. I'm just not sure what.

Anyone know what might be wrong, or what things I can try to solve the extreme CPU load? An average of 65% usage is simply way too much considering what I have loaded...

Thanks! - Dan -

 

[ku]

are you sure you're not reading the idle ? =P... whenever i read my computer usage... i only get get the idle percentage, not the actual percent in use.

 

[HappyFace]

What do you mean by that? I'm viewing the "Kernel Processor Usage" graph. Am I looking at the incorrect graph for real time CPU usage stats?

Hmm...

 

[HappyFace]

Bumparoni!

 

[HappyFace]

Jeez, I'm getting spikes at 100% cpu usage and am only using IE, SYS monitor and Winamp. Can anyone help???

 

[HappyFace]

Did I mention that memory usage is around 160MB???

 

[LuNoTiCK]

That happened to me before for no reason. I just formatted it worked. Maybe you want to try that?

 

[MadRat]

Turn on UDMA mode.

 

[HappyFace]

Maybe I should try that... but I did format very recently. It's such a pain <sigh>

 

[HappyFace]

MadRat, I just checked the drives... they all have DMA enabled.