System using a lot of resources?

Question

A few months ago, I got hit with a Trojan Downloader which I could not remove. I resolved the issue but re-formatting my harddisk. Now, with a much cleaner harddisk, I realise something very odd that is going on. The problem lies in high usage of PC resources for some of my programmes. My browser is using like 147,000K of memory usage along with others such as MOM.exe, CCC.exe which are my graphic software all take up WAY more resources than they used to. Previously, my CPU and RAM usage were like 2% and 10% respectively. Nowawadays, they always seem to border around 50%-60% (both of them). What is wrong with my PC? I am running my PC which has a 2.80Ghz HT Processor and 2.0 GB ram.

Answer 1

It might be a file indexer malfunction, a typical problem with Microsoft.

Right click on C: drive, Properties, and unselect Indexing Service. I forget the MS bulletin this was on, but it helps a lot of pc's.

Answer 2

Hummm....usually the easiest way to solve this problem is by going to start -> run and type in "msconfig" without quotes. Click on the start up tab. All of the boxes checked are processes that start when you turn your computer on and take up RAM. You can disable ones that are not very important. If you even wanted to you could disable all of them, however some processes need to be started when your computer boots (ex: printer driver). If you do not understand what processes to allow and which ones to not allow to start upon boot play around with it until you find the perfect balance of speed and necessary processes. As far as your browser using 147,000k, this could be due to the website(s) you are viewing, sites such as youtube will make the browser process more info, which will also use more memory. You may want to use a different browers, and/or look at toolbars, pop-up blockers, and other software that ties into your browser because this may also be a cause of your problem. Hope this helps!