Was just working away when the computer suddenly got quite bogged down. Was using GMail and Firefox, Outlook, and maybe Foxit Reader at the time.
Reboot didn’t help.
Malware Bytes basic scan (not in safe mode) took over an hour with 6 items removed, but CPU is still idling at 100% post-reboot. Very slow performance.
Win XP Home.
71 processes.
Commit charge 459 M
I don’t know what all that means. Thanks in advance.
Anti-virus is MSE.
thats alot of processes on an XP box, whats the CPU and ram?
RAM 1.49G
Intel Pentium M 1.60GHz
PS: I downloaded Dropbox on our 2 local machines two days ago. I figured it may be too much for this older machine, but I have not noticed any performance problems until 2 days later… maybe because now we are actually USING it to sych docs.(?)
Syncing documents isn’t going to peg a cpu. What processes are using the cpu? You can sort by cpu use in task manager.
I"m running XP Pro with 78 processes at the moment and it’s not even breathing hard. Dual core 1.5GHz, 3.24G of RAM (recognized out of 4G).
I would concur that you need to sort tasks in descending order of CPU and see who’s the hog.
Wait. What? System Idle at 100% means the computer is doing no work. Are you sure that’s what you mean? Maybe you mean “CPU utilization is at 100%.”
Yes. This.
Firefox.exe 140k
msmpeng.exe 59k
svchost.exe 40k
explorer.exe 26k
psia.exe 21k
logmein.exe 26k
tstimer.exe 13k (timeslips software)
applemobiledevice.exe 13k
adobeARM.exe 12k
flux.exe 11k (a baddie?)
lws.exe 10k
jucheck.exe 9k
The rest are under 9k. I can post them if it’s needed.
That’s memory usage, not CPU. CPU usage always adds up to 100 (including the system idle “process” which is the not doing anything part of the cpu).
The Task Manager says “CPU Usage 100%”
Oh I remeber what this is. It’s a little program to spare my eyes from screen britghtness.
I’m not sure about XP (it’s been a while), but on 7 on the processes tab of the task manager, there’s a way to sort the entries by “CPU,” and that will sort it by how much each process is eating your CPU. It may be easier if you look at those.
ETA: Also, can you HEAR it working? I’d assume it’s some bizarre tabulation error if you can’t hear whirring noises.
It’s probably psia.exe, a search for that process name gives this as the first result:
I pulled a few things off the startup (msconfig) and it’s just a tad faster. Maybe it’s time to go through and clean it out like I did a few years ago.
Bearflag70: On the Process tab in Task Manager might be a column titled “CPU .” The numbers there show how much CPU each task is using as a percentage. If you click on the column header, it should sort up, then another click, down. Even without sorting, you should be able to pick out the task hog. What task is using the most time, and what is that % number?
If that column doesn’t show, click on View, Select Columns, and check it (“CPU Usage”) on the list. Now try it again.
svchost.exe 99
Everything else … 00
Jeesh, that could be any number of things, svchost.exe is a generic process that windows uses to run services. Try right clicking on svchost in the process manager and click “go to Service(s)” and tell us what it hightlights.
ETA: Also,
May be useful
A right click in Task Manager shows “end process” and “end process tree” and “set priority” but does not show “go to services.”
To find out which particular service under svchost.exe is using the CPU, you need to download something like Process Explorer. May be too technical a solution in this case. Common culprits IME: Windows Update Agent (processes called things like wuaxxxx), antivirus software.
What is a “tabulation error”? The only thing that could be making noise is a hard drive. If the CPU is at 100% it could very well be doing something that does little or no I/O.