Need Help... NOW!!! CPU troubles!!

[idancesafetydance]

As of last night, my CPU has been idling at 45-70%, not 1-4 like normal (in Vista) However, System Idle Process is at 98-ish %, meaning that 98% of my processor usage is free... well... it's not... The CPU is idling WAAAAYYYY above normal. At times even the mouse lags, games struggle to load, and well.... I can't play Crysis or barely even FS!!:help: I have tried: Swapping the RAM.
-Uninstalling an reistalling drivers.
-Checking for viruses/spyware.
-made sure that resource hogging programs weren't initiating on start-up.
and still... running hot and fast while doing NOZING!! Plz help, I will greatly appreciate it.
---------------MY SPECS----------------------
Processor- AMD athlon X2 64 4800+ 2.5 Ghz dual core socket AM2+
GPU- BFG Nvidia 9600 GT OC 512 MB of ram (great little card really, max on Crysis)
Ram- dunno... Just know I got 3 gigs of it.
OS- Window Vista Home Premium 32bit w/ SP1
PSU-BFG Mx-550 550 watts
HDD-320 Gig
Anything else?

---Chuck---

[mrogers]

Perhaps there could be some dust in the pc box sucked in by the fans over time building up to a point causing the pc to overheat? A can of air spray would clean out the dust inside the box.

[Motormouse]

sounds like a virus/worm to me;
have you checked for the 'conficker' virus?

ttfn

Pete

[idancesafetydance]

Mrogers... no dust, practically a new PC, got it fer Christmas. Good idea though.

Motormouse.... Highly doubt it's the Conficker, seeing as how I have searched using 4 spyware/virus/worm detectors (3 times each). However, I did move the PC to a spot that may provide better cooling (although my temps weren't even high at all) and even switched from one DVI-D slot to the other one. Deleted Windows defender... now it's hovering at around 10-20%, not the total problem... but it's better than 80% LOL. Thanks guys, wow, your quik to reply!

[Seaking055]

I would agree with the dust theory, I give my rig a good blast air cleaning once a week, it's surprising what can gather inside the box from the intake fans. It doesn't take much to give you problems.

As it's pretty new, another idea might be to check the cpu is seated properly with good thermal paste.

Hope it helps

[idancesafetydance]

I would agree with the dust theory, I give my rig a good blast air cleaning once a week, it's surprising what can gather inside the box from the intake fans. It doesn't take much to give you problems.

As it's pretty new, another idea might be to check the cpu is seated properly with good thermal paste.

Hope it helps That's kinda what I meant when I said it's not dust... I already cleaned it lol. The CPU is runing at it's new so called "idle" at about 10 C, the normal is about 5 C.

[minuteman10]

Check Task Manager (Control,ALT,DEL) to see what processes are running and what is taking resources....I used to keep getting a "winword.exe" process that needed to be manually shutdown...used to wind my machine up...just a thought!

[LonelyplanetXO]

I agree with minuteman. Google all the processes and see what's really running - often viruses & spyware disguise themselves with innocent looking names.

LPXO

[LouP]

Well tonight my machine started a dragg'n also. :gossip: I think I have myself to blame because I read somewhere that if you install .net 3.0 and get rid of 1.1, that yer frame rates will shoot up. Well the opposite happened but I am betting I have the dust/dirt problem as I started seeing a slowdawn the other day b4 all of this. :help: I can't rember the last time I cleaned out the inside :faint:

LouP

[Z-PurpleBubble]

How many processes and/or services do you have running? And what kind of security do you have? (antivir, firewall etc...)

Just want to complete the picture here! BTW, the first question is the most important!

Oh, and your pagefile should be exactly three times the size of your ram, on a non windows and non fs disk or partition. That makes running the rig a lot less cpu intensive!

BTW, downloading SP2 isn't a bad idea either!

I'll be looking into this thread again!

PB

[idancesafetydance]

Never mind... fixed it, no program was hogging resources. The only thing I hadn't tried was swapping the RAM, so I did that earlier and VOILA! Turns out the computer knew RAM was there... Just couldn't find it. It's fixed now I thank everyone who gave a suggestion, That way I could find the issue and eliminate it. THANKS.:woot:

---Chuck---