D
David F
Hi,
Can anyone offer me some advice on a problem.
I have an Athlon 800, 256Mb Ram, Windows XP (recently
upgraded from ME)
Sometimes I turn on my computer and it
runs at about 30% CPU usage (with nothing open), other
times it is running at 80-90% usage (again nothing open),
on rare occasions it runs at 0-5% usage (this is great,
just how I would like it to be all of the time). When I
get a slow start-up, I have to keep re-starting till I
get 'a good one'!
Following advice from this newsgroup I downloaded Process
Explorer and this tells me that what is using the power
is the "Hardware Interrupts". I have the basics, graphics
card, monitor and a broadband USB modem (even if I unplug
the modem the problem isn't solved.)
What is doing the interrupting and more importantly, why
is it such a game of chance as to whether I'll get this
problem when I turn the computer on?
At 30% the computer runs well enough to do what I want,
at 80% I can barely have one explorer window open. But
why won't it be 0-5% everytime I switch on (with the
Hardware Interrupt using the odd 2 or 3%, isn't this
normal?)
I keep thinking maybe I should buy a faster computer, but
surely if it works fine sometimes I should expect it to
work all of the time?
Can anyone help?
David
Can anyone offer me some advice on a problem.
I have an Athlon 800, 256Mb Ram, Windows XP (recently
upgraded from ME)
Sometimes I turn on my computer and it
runs at about 30% CPU usage (with nothing open), other
times it is running at 80-90% usage (again nothing open),
on rare occasions it runs at 0-5% usage (this is great,
just how I would like it to be all of the time). When I
get a slow start-up, I have to keep re-starting till I
get 'a good one'!
Following advice from this newsgroup I downloaded Process
Explorer and this tells me that what is using the power
is the "Hardware Interrupts". I have the basics, graphics
card, monitor and a broadband USB modem (even if I unplug
the modem the problem isn't solved.)
What is doing the interrupting and more importantly, why
is it such a game of chance as to whether I'll get this
problem when I turn the computer on?
At 30% the computer runs well enough to do what I want,
at 80% I can barely have one explorer window open. But
why won't it be 0-5% everytime I switch on (with the
Hardware Interrupt using the odd 2 or 3%, isn't this
normal?)
I keep thinking maybe I should buy a faster computer, but
surely if it works fine sometimes I should expect it to
work all of the time?
Can anyone help?
David