54% CPU use at Idle

Fuzz

Fuzz

Fuzz

Soldato
Joined
3 Aug 2003
Posts
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Location
UK
What the hell is going on with this PC.

nothing untoward downloaded (28 running processes and all check out ok)

Nothing obvious in the task manager using the CPU yet it hovers around 54% on one core.

I started removing the installed components to try and track it down (java, flash, itunes, adobe reader etc)

Reboot the pc and windows fails to starts AGAIN

Back to bloody square one

Anyone have a box of matches and a gallon of four star.:mad::mad::mad::mad:
 
there were no big numbers in there no.

It caught my eye when I did another HD tune test on the raptors read/write ability. I had a saved one (prnt screen ) from yesterday that showed the CPU at 1.6%
now it's closer to 60%

No matter anyway, something is seriously ******* and I can't boot into windows at all now, so I'm back to where the pc was on Thursday when it crashed. :(
Just finished a clean install too , spent all bloody weekend on it :(
 
It was a repair install that caused the major catastrophe on Thursday, all I originally lost was a sound driver and was hoping for a quick fix.

There's more here than meets the eye, I think there is a borked DIMM in there maybe.
I've been going round in circles with the thing since the start of the weekend.
 
Get into task manager and start ending processes till the CPU usage disappears. That's the quickest way to locate it. If it's not that then start looking elsewhere.

Try to have the CPU utilisation bar in front of you so you can see it drop whilst ending processes. It may not be a great method but it's worked for me in the past.
 
that's the first thing i did alongside googling all the processes to see what they were.
It never budged from 50 odd%

Then I started looking elsewhere, namely the add remove manager, deleted all the stuff I had installed and now it POSTS but restarts when windows splash screen appears.

CPU utilisation is in the task bar when task manager is running ;)
 
Ahh cool.

If you can't pinpoint this quite soon then I'd wipe the OS and start again. Some people find this a daunting task but if you're organised enough it can take little time. Using software like Acronis is great in these situations and is something you should maybe think of for the future. With Acronis the whole system is back to a state you are happy within just a few minutes.

Good luck with either finding the problem or getting your OS reinstalled. :)
 
I had a similar issue where the CPU load was spiking at 100% and making the PC unusable although it would boot but when i unplugged the ethernet cable it stopped spiking. Plugged it back in again and still spiking, so tried a different slot on the router and all fine. So it could be the ethernet drivers but never really found out for sure.
 
creed said:
I had a similar issue where the CPU load was spiking at 100% and making the PC unusable although it would boot but when i unplugged the ethernet cable it stopped spiking. Plugged it back in again and still spiking, so tried a different slot on the router and all fine. So it could be the ethernet drivers but never really found out for sure.
Click to expand...

Makes you so angry you could just punch a baby :D.
 
I once had a similar problem and found it was a device driver playing up. Go into device manager and and click on view hidden devices. If any have an exclamation mark next them disable them, reboot and see if the cpu usage drops.
 
need a screenshot of task manager sorted by cpu usage

better still a screenshot of process explorer
 
Will try safe mode tonight but I'm pretty sure I tried that when it first crashed and it still wouldn't boot.

Booting into a floppy of memtest and the thing is crashing.. for 25 ish quid it's no biggy if I have to buy some more RAM, if the ones in there aren't borked I'll have 4Gb :D
 
nokinidea said:
there were no big numbers in there no.

It caught my eye when I did another HD tune test on the raptors read/write ability. I had a saved one (prnt screen ) from yesterday that showed the CPU at 1.6%
now it's closer to 60%

No matter anyway, something is seriously ******* and I can't boot into windows at all now, so I'm back to where the pc was on Thursday when it crashed. :(
Just finished a clean install too , spent all bloody weekend on it :(
Click to expand...

I had the 50% idle once & it was after HD tune test on my Raid.
 
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