Cpu Usage Spiking?

Question

Hi, in the task manager
my cpu usage spikes between 0-50 , 0-25, 0-40's and more
with no programs running.This never happened before,. It was always 0-1 0-1 when no programs were on.

i get sluggish performance now when i do music editing.
I have a P4 3.2
1gb ddr2 ram

Whats the problem?

Answer 1

It usually means it's infected but you should first check which process is causing it.

Just go to the Process tab and click on the processor usage column to sort it. If you don't have it there, go in the view menu, choose to select the columns and check the processor usage box.

This will give you a good idea what it is and you can do a search on the name. If it's a svchost or explorer.exe, don't bother to search and consider it very likely to be an infection.

To scan your computer just open your antivirus and antispyware and choose scan. If it doesn't fix it you can try http://housecall.trendmicro.com .

Answer 2

Well, I think you mean 1.5gb of ram, not giga hertz (Ghz) You'll see that your page file usage is not full, in fact I'm positive you're not even using 1/3 of that ram. However, what]s going on is you have so many processes running, that your cpu seems to be going slower because it has to do so many calculations, going over so many different things. To name a few common issues, go ahead and delete everything in the folder named "startup."m This does not actually delete the programs, as it instead stops them from comming up automatically. Then, if this is XP, on the bottom right in the taskbar, end and close al of the programs you do not need running at the time there as well. Then, Enjoy your faster, properly working PC.

Answer 3

In Task Manager, go to the processes tab. Under the CPU column, observe which process is causing the spike. If it is an unfamiliar process, check it out in Google. It might be a virus. You need to scan and remove any virus you find.

If there is no virus, try doing a system restore to a previous point when you were not experiencing the cpu usage spike.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

You could check the Task Manager to see what processes are running when the spikes take place. Do you have any s/w to check for spyware that is running in the background? It sounds like you may have downloaded something that is a hidden file using your pc w/o your knowledge. What OS is it running? If Vista it may be a problem related to it's reporting back to god (MS).

Answer 5

1.) Click "Start Menu"
2.) Click "Programs"
3.) Click " Accessories
4.) Click "System Tools"
5.) Click "Disk Cleanup"

This should remove useless files that are taking up space.

now after this you need to do a "Disk Defrangmenter" its right next to "Disk Cleanup"


I hope this helps