Second core of my CPU running wild

[Elementalist]

I realise it's a vague symptom, but would anyone know what it might mean? The second core (when looking at task manager) is constantly running at around 85 to 95% usage all of a sudden.

No processes show up in the list as using CPU (not that amount anyway), but the second core usage is always high and the system sure is intermittently slow -internet especially (pages that I know are fine - my second PC on the same network gets them ok - are refusing to appear).

No viruses or firewall intrusions reported by McAfee (though I didn't install it until after I noticed the issue). Is may PC a Russion mafia zombie? heh

Any ideas on where to start looking? What diagnostics tools might help?

Thanks folks!

 

[squiffy]

What is taking up the CPU % (open TM and sort by CPU %) also have you installed the AMD dual core driver?

 

[Minstadave]

I realise it's a vague symptom, but would anyone know what it might mean? The second core (when looking at task manager) is constantly running at around 85 to 95% usage all of a sudden.

No processes show up in the list as using CPU (not that amount anyway), but the second core usage is always high and the system sure is intermittently slow -internet especially (pages that I know are fine - my second PC on the same network gets them ok - are refusing to appear).

No viruses or firewall intrusions reported by McAfee (though I didn't install it until after I noticed the issue). Is may PC a Russion mafia zombie? heh

Any ideas on where to start looking? What diagnostics tools might help?

Thanks folks!

What CPU is it?

 

[Elementalist]

I can't tell what is using the CPU (no processes show up as using CPU time)

As for the processor - my setup =

Case: Thermaltake Aluminium Silver Tsunami Window (No PSU)
Cabling: Standard Cable Management
Cooling: Premium Cooling System (2-4 Fans with digital controller)
PSU: Seasonic S12 Silent 600w PSU
Motherboard: Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Xpress 3200 Crossfire (skt 939)
CPU: AMD X2 4400 SKT 939 Retail (2.2GHz 2x1Mb)
CPU Cooling: Scythe Ninja Heatpipe Cooler (all CPUs)
Memory: Corsair 1024Mb XMS LLPRO DDR433 CL2 Non ECC (x2)
Hard Drive: 74Gb Raptor 10000 8mb E-SATA (x2)
Storage HD: 400Gb Maxtor DiamondMax 11 7200 16mb SATA II ROHS
MasterGraphics: ATI X1800XT Crossfire Mastercard 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO
Graphics2: Sapphire ATI X1800XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO
Optical Drive: NEC 4550A 16x dual layer DVDRW Silver
Optical Drive 2: NEC 4550A 16x dual layer DVDRW Silver
Sound Card: Creative 7.1 X-FI Fatal1ty FPS
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2 OEM
Overclocking: Standard Overclocking (3-20% - CPU/Memory)

 

[Corasik]

Try Mark Russinovich's Process Explorer, its a free replacement (suppliment?) for Task Manager, with a lot more detail. Can be downloaded from sysinternals... Google it to find it.

If you have a virus/trojan on the system, or just a cunning piece of DRM software anything really, it could be masking itself from Task manager.

It may be something totally harmless, like a hard disk misconfigured for PIO transfers rather than DMA, but Process Explorer should show that up too, as it can show processor use of both programs, and the system too. (although you can get to see the system usage on XP too, by turning on 'Show Kernel Times' which is under task managers View menu. If the CPU load is in red then its a Kernel problem/hardware conflict etc.

 

[Elementalist]

Thanks for that advice - I'll check that out tonight. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a hardware/driver thing given I'm suddenly having problems with Crossfire and Networking also.

Unfortunately, I only know enough about PCs to get into trouble, not out

I know more than most of the public, though - how the heck do people manage?! Mind you, I guess most folks don't buy bleeding-edge tech...

 

[Elementalist]

Oh and I did install the AMD drivers a while back to stop a problem with mis-synchronisations making Everquest 2 go mad. The drivers resolved that problem - are they perhaps causing this one, though?