I had just turned on the PC about twenty minutes ago and was surfing the internet when sudenly it became very loud. I hit control-Alt-delete and went to the processes tab. For some reason the CPU usage just shot up when I was on the net to approximately 58%. I let it sit at the desktop for awhile but no change. I ran a few maintenance tools but no real effect. Finally, I restarted the computer. It still seemed to run high through the reboot process but went down when I got to the desktop. I have a AMD Dual-Core CPU.

1) Is this a problem or am I freaking out over nothing?
2) If this is a problem of some sort, what can I do to fix it?

Thank you.

Now my CPU usage is at a constant 50-55% while just idle at the desktop.

How many processes do you have running?

After the PC boots up there is about 54 processes running. I usually close about 10 of them. On average I have about 40-43 processes going on while using the PC.

i had this problem, turns out that bearshare v6 caused it lol. It was preventing the cpu load to go below 50%. even tho bearshare was not running it was still there in the processes. this meant i had to end it manually.

Zak,

Could be a symptom of spyware! Have you been running anti-spyware utils? If not, I recommend using 3 anti-spy as there are different types of spyware. The ones I recommend are:

• Ad-Aware 2007 Free
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• AVG Anti-Spyware

All are free and can be downloaded over the Internet.

May the Force be with you!

Gentlemen,

I shut down the PC last night and started it up in the morning. The CPU usage has been normal. Any explanation as to why it would just go away? Also, I have downloaded and installed CCleaner and I also use Norton system works. Should I also use one of the anti-spyware as well? Just want to make sure. Thank you.

What may have happened is that you had a "run-away" process. That means the process (program) ran into a problem it could not recover from and it was eating up processing and/or memory. A reboot often corrects the problem.

I might go through your startup programs and delete any useless ones. Use the Microsoft Configuration Utility.

Is the configuration utility in the control panel? I tried looking for it there but could not find it. Thanks.

Sorry, I thought you would know where MS Configuration Utility is located. Here it is:

Start -> Run -> msconfig -> Startup page

There are web sites that you can Google for that will explain what the different startup programs do. Just deselect the ones that you don't want. To permanently remove them from the Startup list, I use MS Configuration Cleanup utility.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic53669.html