Strange CPU usage

  • Thread starter Thread starter DARhind
  • Start date Start date
D

DARhind

I recently had a hard drive failure, just broke, so re-installed
everything on a new 120Gig drive. I am using XP Home SP2 and all
updates, 1.8GHz CPU, 1Gb RAM. All was well for a week or so, then
programs would freeze, Task Manager showed 2 copies of the program,
both marked as "Not responding." Trying to end the task did nothing,
and if I tried it 3 or 4 times Task Manager would be listed as "Not
responding." At that point the only way out was the power switch.
Since I had made an image of C & D (my program are on D) right after
the re-build I restored everything. That worked for a couple of days,
then I noticed that the start-up time was inordinately slow, 3 or 4
minutes, and I have the leanest start up folder imaginable. If I try
to use the machine shortly after the Desktop appeared I'd have to wait
maybe a further 2 or 3 minutes before the program would fire up.

Today programs are running oh so slow, each letter I type takes a
second or so to appear on the screen. Watching the CPU usage graph in
Task Manager it is at 100% at frequent intervals and continuously for
a minute or more from time to time. Yet the Processes window doesn't
show any process with an excessive CPU usage, although it is hard to
follow exactly what is going on with the numbers jumping about. I have
only one program running, IE7, plus Zone Alarm Pro V7, AVG antivirus
(up to date) and a Wireless LAN. Most of the time the CPU usage graph
jumps about between 20% and 60%, with jumps to 100%, but at the same
time the System Idle Process hovers between 90% and 98%. This doesn't
seem to add up, what am I missing here?

Any suggestions much appreciated.

David
 
I recently had a hard drive failure, just broke, so re-installed
everything on a new 120Gig drive. I am using XP Home SP2 and all
updates, 1.8GHz CPU, 1Gb RAM. All was well for a week or so, then
programs would freeze, Task Manager showed 2 copies of the program,
both marked as "Not responding." Trying to end the task did nothing,
and if I tried it 3 or 4 times Task Manager would be listed as "Not
responding." At that point the only way out was the power switch.
Since I had made an image of C & D (my program are on D) right after
the re-build I restored everything. That worked for a couple of days,
then I noticed that the start-up time was inordinately slow, 3 or 4
minutes, and I have the leanest start up folder imaginable. If I try
to use the machine shortly after the Desktop appeared I'd have to wait
maybe a further 2 or 3 minutes before the program would fire up.

Today programs are running oh so slow, each letter I type takes a
second or so to appear on the screen. Watching the CPU usage graph in
Task Manager it is at 100% at frequent intervals and continuously for
a minute or more from time to time. Yet the Processes window doesn't
show any process with an excessive CPU usage, although it is hard to
follow exactly what is going on with the numbers jumping about. I have
only one program running, IE7, plus Zone Alarm Pro V7, AVG antivirus
(up to date) and a Wireless LAN. Most of the time the CPU usage graph
jumps about between 20% and 60%, with jumps to 100%, but at the same
time the System Idle Process hovers between 90% and 98%. This doesn't
seem to add up, what am I missing here?
Click to expand...

Ok, first of all, never, ever have your programs on any other drive
letter than C:. I don't care what anyone tells you, it's a bad, bad
idea. Some programmers hard-code their apps to reside on C: only. When
they can't find the apps where they are normally expected C:\Program
Files (or sometimes C:\), you will have problems like you're seeing.
You're better off biting the bullet and re-installing all apps on C:\.
D: drives should always be for storing images or junk.

What specific exe's are spiking in the Task Manager?

- Thee Chicago Wolf
 
I recently had a hard drive failure, just broke, so re-installed
everything on a new 120Gig drive. I am using XP Home SP2 and all
updates, 1.8GHz CPU, 1Gb RAM. All was well for a week or so, then
programs would freeze, Task Manager showed 2 copies of the program,
both marked as "Not responding." Trying to end the task did nothing,
and if I tried it 3 or 4 times Task Manager would be listed as "Not
responding." At that point the only way out was the power switch.
Since I had made an image of C & D (my program are on D) right after
the re-build I restored everything. That worked for a couple of days,
then I noticed that the start-up time was inordinately slow, 3 or 4
minutes, and I have the leanest start up folder imaginable. If I try
to use the machine shortly after the Desktop appeared I'd have to wait
maybe a further 2 or 3 minutes before the program would fire up.

Today programs are running oh so slow, each letter I type takes a
second or so to appear on the screen. Watching the CPU usage graph in
Task Manager it is at 100% at frequent intervals and continuously for
a minute or more from time to time. Yet the Processes window doesn't
show any process with an excessive CPU usage, although it is hard to
follow exactly what is going on with the numbers jumping about. I have
only one program running, IE7, plus Zone Alarm Pro V7, AVG antivirus
(up to date) and a Wireless LAN. Most of the time the CPU usage graph
jumps about between 20% and 60%, with jumps to 100%, but at the same
time the System Idle Process hovers between 90% and 98%. This doesn't
seem to add up, what am I missing here?

Any suggestions much appreciated.

David
Click to expand...

Does re-installing "everything" include all of the motherboard drivers,
especially those for the chipset, as well?
 
What anti-spyware programme are you using?
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

Process Explorer provides more information than Task Manager.

Download Process Explorer.

For further information about Process Explorer see here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/ProcessExplorer.mspx

To ascertain which service is causing the problem select the image
producing the high CPU usage, right click, select Properties,
Services. Note there are the full names and some explanation of what
each service does.

You will find further information on Services here:
http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12

To trace the particular Service involved you need to turn off each
service in turn and then restore it noting what effect it has on CPU
usage. However, you need to take care and watch what other Services
are dependent on that service. When you click on the Dependencies
tab allow it a little time to display the information


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Sorry it's me again !

Thee Chicago Wolf schrieb:
[...]
Ok, first of all, never, ever have your programs on any other drive
letter than C:. I don't care what anyone tells you, it's a bad, bad
idea. Some programmers hard-code their apps to reside on C: only. When
they can't find the apps where they are normally expected C:\Program
Files (or sometimes C:\), you will have problems like you're seeing.
You're better off biting the bullet and re-installing all apps on C:\.
D: drives should always be for storing images or junk.
Click to expand...

That's not a users problem ! PROGRAMMERS should (!!!) write their programs
(1) independent of their instal location
(2) keep DLLs in their programs folder
or if shared amongst their programs
at a location common to their programms
(3) Use as little privileges as are absolutely neccesary
(4) NEVER overwrite/remove existing files outside their own folder !!
(I do NOT want to reinstall the whole system, just because a
deinstaller just thinks it could remove system files it also needed, and
replaced during installation !)

(remember that DLL-hell expression ?)

Example: WTF does a simple Business Card program need Admin level for
its operation ???

Nevertheless, it is really, really sad, that you are NOT wrong yet !

I wish programmers would keep in mind, their programs are NOT the only
ones on a system ! (That goes to you Micky$$oft-guys too !!)
 
Ok, first of all, never, ever have your programs on any other drive
letter than C:. I don't care what anyone tells you, it's a bad, bad
idea. Some programmers hard-code their apps to reside on C: only. When
they can't find the apps where they are normally expected C:\Program
Files (or sometimes C:\), you will have problems like you're seeing.
You're better off biting the bullet and re-installing all apps on C:\.
D: drives should always be for storing images or junk.

What specific exe's are spiking in the Task Manager?

- Thee Chicago Wolf- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input,

I have always installed programs in D:\Program Files\ since the days
of Win 3.0, and have never encountered this problem. Everything that I
have on D now was on D before the drive broke. I cannot remember when
I last installed a program that didn't have a "Custom" install option,
and one of the options is always to choose the location. If there is
some pressing need to have a particular program on C then I imagine
the setup would not provide this option, and if it didn't I wouldn't
install it. As far as I'm concerned C is for the OS, it is small,
lean, easily backed-up and restored.

As for the .exe's...
ApntEx (Alps pointing device) 1-4
Explorer 1-4 occasionally 10
System 0-2 occasionally 5
Taskmgr 0-2 occasionally 10
Vsmon (Zone Alarm) 0-2
WLanUtil 0-2
Zlclient (Zone Alalrm) 0-1

I watched these numbers over a period of about 3 minutes. Looking at
the graph I see that during this time the CPU usage hit 100 3 times,
was over 90 6 times, and was over 80 many times. Yet the System idle
never went below 84. "Something doesn't compute!"

And as far as restoring the motherboard drivers etc. this is a Sony
Viao laptop so it came with restore CDs which put things back to
factory spec. I'm not certain, but I imagine that means "everything".

David
 
Just a final note on this saga...

The machine slowed down steadily during the day. I tried Process
Explorer, it showed more detail than Task Manager, but although there
were frequent excursions to 100% CPU usage at no time did the System
Idle drop to zero.

Things came to a head when I tried to start Eudora to send an e-mail
I'd been working on for days. The text was written in Word, and I had
intended to copy and paste it into Eudora. Well when Eudora started
the screen went white, blank, except for the name at the top. Since I
couldn't do anything, or see Process Explorer I made a cup of coffee.
A good 10 minutes later Eudora started up. Now I went to Word to copy
the text. There was no text! File > Recent was blank, File > Open was
blank. Nothing in My Documents, not a single file. I did a search for
the file by name, blank. By a word in the text, blank. Using a file
reccovery program, blank. I wasn't too worried about the contents of
My Documents, I have back-ups, but that file I saved only an hour or
so before this happened is gone...all 8 pages of it!

I tried the MS malicious software tool, Grisoft AVG anti-virus, Ad
Aware, SpybotSD. No problem found.

I didn't bother to restore an image, went back to the restore CDs.
Have been wading through re-installing and updating everything. Just
one niggling concern...is it possible for some threat to remain hidden
in the root of a drive?

David
 
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