[Eli]

Donno what the hell was done or I have done....but my cpu is acting strange lately..


every little task i do with it it jumps to 100% (i see it on task manager) then after a 1-2 secs it comes back to normal.

like pressing an "enter" for IE to go to a certain site, or open a dir window

i have MSN and Norton AV in the b/g running

im using a pIII600 w/ 256MB


Is that normal? or there's something wrong with it?

plz help..


-Eli

[craig5320]

Are you noticing a performance degrade? or merely seeing it in the task manager? if you can't tell without checking in the task manager I wouldn't see it as that bigger problem. I had a similar kind of thing where every 2 sec's cpu usage jumped to 100 and the mouse stuttered, couldn't track the problem down, had to re-install XP that sorted it tho.

[Calinerti]

I had a similar problem with XP which would keep the "explorer" process at 100% for extended periods. I tracked down the source of this problem to be an issue with *.avi files. I got rid of the problem by using regedit to delete the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\Avi

I'm of course not certain thats your problem... open the taskmanager and watch the "explorer" process as you click on different file types. When I tried to access an avi, the explorer process would jump to 100% and remain there for a while, 10 or 15 minutes in some cases. I was very glad to track down a solution.

Hope it helps

[edperks]

Did you try turning off Auto protect in Norton AV Mine would scan all webpage before I viewed them causing the spike in the CPU to 100% for several seconds. I just keep my email scan on in norton and run norton once a week for virus checks and updates to DEF's

[craig588]

Is DMA disabled by any chance?

[nieves]

Originally posted by Eli
Donno what the hell was done or I have done....but my cpu is acting strange lately..


every little task i do with it it jumps to 100% (i see it on task manager) then after a 1-2 secs it comes back to normal.

It's normal for the cpu usage to climb to 100% for a brief period when you start a program. Especially if you use an A/V program which scans every file accessed... But it should go down pretty fast, you should not have a peak for more than a second or two when you start a program like explorer. For more cpu-intensive tasks like starting a divx in media player 8 or 9, the cpu will peak a lot more when opening the file and during part of the buffering stage. So, it's normal, but it shouldn't freeze your sistem, not even for a second...

I'd suggest getting the latest drivers for your mainboard and maybe flash your bios. Run a defrag, too. If your start an application which has the files spread all over your hard-drive, it will require more overhead, more cpu usage and hard-drive swapping.

[Eli]

well...

it seems to be Norton Antivirus..

I disabled its "Auto-protect" and now the cpu usage is normal, after a task it goes up to 50%~ and not 100%.

so now i will Enable it only when im gettin mail, i guess.


Thanks for the help guys.

-Eli