help finding out whats eating the cpu

gazz

gazz

gazz

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17 Jan 2011
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i've got a pretty old computer, rocketboy AV8 mobo (abit) amd 3500+ cpu (running stock atm at 2.2gig)
4 gig of ram, geforce 7800se gfx card (only 256 meg, running dual monitors from it) and a 111 meg hd, connected via sata cable, oh and running window 7 pro, 64 bit.

it was playing up badly, the other hard drive which was an ide one was thrashing its self all the time, took 25 minutes to shut down, so i formatted it and put a fresh install of win7 on, but the HD was still thrashing like mad,

so i dug out a sata drive of the same specs i had, put fresh win7 64 on that, and no longer get the drive thrashing, but i am getting pretty high cpu loads most of the time,

from start up, when everything has finished loading, the cpu meter hovers at about 50% all the time, if i start a game up (world of subways 2.. a train sim) cpu will peg at 100%, ram at 52%, gfx card ram at 249 meg of 256,
but when i exit the game, cpu load will go down to 7%, but slowly creap back up to around 50%

looking on the task manager, i can not see anything taking all the cpu cycles up, i've clicked 'show processes from all users' and the only thing showing high is 'system idle processes', adding up the few items showing usage, it comes to about 10%,

how do i find out what the other 40% is, and stop it???

the mobo is an overclocking one, but apparantly it has problems due to me having a sata HD connected, upping the cpu freq ups the sata freq, and the hd fails to be recognised,
but i want to find out what is hogging the system before i start playing with overclocking.

yes i know i should get a new mobo and cpu, but i havent got the dosh atm, saving up but it'll be a while. so for now i need to get this system running the best i can.

anyone able to help?
 
hi,

erm, to be honnest i dont know that much about computers, everything is standard how windowz installed it, so paging is prolly on,
 
what's prolly???

It might be you have some service program that's eating into your processing time.

Launch Task Manager, then click on Processes tab.. Look for anything that's taking high CPU time and google entries making sure it's not a rogue entry.

Do you got the same problem in Safe-Mode?

Whilst in safe mode, run HijackThis and print the results.

Then go back into normal mode and repeat. Look at the two results side-by-side highlighting any difference and again google anything that look suspicious.
 
After a fresh install it could just be downloading and installing loads of Windows updates.

Have you installed an anti Virus program, that could be doing a background scan but I would expect that to show in Task manager.

Andi.
 
prolly = probably, me being lazy and missing out a few letters, soz... oops. sorry :)

atm i have no anti virus, to be honnest i dont usually run with anything but the stock windows defender as norton slows the sytems down so much... but i realise that's probably why the old HD was thrashing so much, boot sector virus or something.

it was the processs tab i looked in before, even with 'show processes from all users' it's just not reading accurate, shows around 50%, but only about 10% is visable... i click on the cpu colum so the highest are at the top, and the largest is about 6%, the rest 1%'s, adding up to around 10%

only thing that is high is system idle processes, at around 90% most of the time,

downloaded all windows updates just after i installed win7 fresh, then i turned auto update and checking off to make sure it wasnt that,

i'll do the hijack this thingy and see what it gives me, it's just annoying, i know the cpu is old and i'm right on the limit with what i want to use it for, but i feel that if there's something eating up half it's capacity to start with, and i can kill it, then i may get better performance before having to overclock,

a new mobo and cpu are on the books, but cost is a big issue right now, so it'll be a while before i can do that, so gotta make the most of this system for now.
 
cheers guys, i'll have a play, i did a hijackthis scan, found a load of things it says are missing entries (.dll's and all that) no diferance when i nsafe mode tho, very few items are listed anyway... i did a hijackthis scan on another computer a few years ago, and it came out about 2 pages long... was when one of those home page changer jobbies had got in the system,


there's deffo something not right, before on the old ide drive with loads of rubbish on the system, loading a certian simulator, it'd take about 20 seconds to load it all and get into the driving seat so to speak,

now with a fresh install, it takes about 10 minutes, i'm not kidding, the cpu load is pegged all the time and the progress bar just inches along every minute or so, (got dual monitors, simulator only using one monitor for now, so i have the cpu meter up in the other monitor hence i am able to see in real time what it's doing... and i know that takes up a little cpu cycles... 3 to 4 it rekons, but shutting it down dosent do enough, still 100% cpu load as soon as i do anything, even loading this web site pegs it at 100% till it's all loaded.

edit: just started up resorce monitor, system interupts is taking up 45-55% all the time,
 
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you know, i think i may have cracked it, ok, not 'I' you lot helped me of course....

it was the lan card driver, onboard lan, but i imagine windowz loaded the wrong one or something, i hav just uninstalled it for now as i dont use wired connections anyway,

But i'm now running 9% cpu usage, with internet explorer being the biggest at 2%, starting the simulator up is much much quicker now, and the frame rate is much better.. even than it was before i did the fresh install.

it still runs at 100% cpu load when running the simulation, but i expect that, there's lots going on in it,

but thanks again for all the help everyone,

hopefully my next questions will be about what mobo and cpu to get for an upgrade.
 
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