Cpu Spike Causing Mouse Stutter And Software Crash!! Aaaargh

[MUNKIC]

Can somebody please give me an idea what might be causing my cpu to spike?? basicallythe mouse stutters and locks up and if i hit cntl/alt/del then it shows the cpu jumping from around 4 to 100%, ive run housecall, avg, pandas titanium and a bunch of other antivirus stuff and it seems to be clean, so im clueless, any help is appreciated.

Also can anyone recommend a registry cleaner thats free and actually works (not microsoft regclean!) preferably a full working version not just a demo or trial that only cleans about ten entries.

Cheers.


windows xp
amd athlon 2200xp
1.79 ghz
768mb ram

 

[El Presidente]

I had the same problem when I set a process (I think it was a video editing program) to Real Time priority. To view the priority, press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select the Processes tab. Then select View, Select Columns... and then check the box named Base Priority. Only taskmgr, winlogon, and csrss should have High priority (at least on my computer, yours may be slighty different). However, nothing should have Real Time priority unless you manually choose it. Everything else should be Normal.
Hope this helps! :grinthumb

 

[fwhoover]

I have had the same problem with CPU spikes and I finally found it.
I had a Back-door Trojan Virus. I had Mcafee for over 4 years always updated automatically and scanned completely twice a week.
Since it is also a memory hog I uninstalled it and installed AVG and it jumped on it immediately. It had bogged down the comp so bad that it would barley scan.
I have been chasing this problem for two weeks. What a relief.

fwh