My CPU is constantly stuck at 100%

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m on Vista and using an Acer Aspire 3680 with a Celeron 1.73 Ghz (don’t hate the player, hate the game) and the CPU will go to 100% and it has nothing to do with processing running.

Right now it is at 100%, but I only have 2 browsers open (firefox and chrome). And each has 2 tabs. However sometimes i can run 10+ tabs and not have a problem.

However when I check windows task manager even though it says CPU at 100%, you can see which programs are using what % of CPU. But even when it is at 100%, I can only see about 20% of CPU being used on programs like firefox. All the other programs are 00. So the Task manager says I am using 100% at the bottom (CPU Usage: 100%) however when I click on the CPU tab and organize programs by CPU usage it only adds up to 10-20. I’m not sure what the other 80-90 is being used on since it isn’t listed in task manager.

2

Open the task manager

Then go to the tab that says PROCESSES

Make sure you click the bottom left where it says “Show processes from all users”

This is often where things are “hiding”

Then go to the Resources tab

At the bottom it will say “resources monitor”

Click this and you will have all the info now

3

Do some spyware checks, just to be sure. You might try a program like Process Explorer, which is essentially a more detailed Task Manager.

4

I’ve had that happen in Windows XP too (Or rather, it would occasionally max out one CPU core for no apparent reason, which led to 50% contant usage with no programs running.), but a solid reboot would always fix it.

5

After a long browsing session, your browser will accumulate quite a bit in it’s cache, etc…

The best method is to close firefox, be sure to ‘quit’* and not ‘save and quit’…

*Be sure that each time you close your browser everything is cleared, most importantly the cache and history. This can be handled via Tools>Options.

In circumstances where Firefox is hogging ur CPU, just End Task under the Process menu in your Task Manager. After it’s closed re-opening should be quick…

Note that Ending Task on Firefox will not be the same as closing it normally–all of your cache, etc will still be saved.