For some reason, Sygate personal firewall pro (build 5.5.xx) is taking up more cpu time at the moment than it ever has before.

Currently, and for the past week or so now, with SETI running at low priority on my XP Pro installation, SMC.EXE is using the cpu's time at fluctuating levels between 8% and 19%, with the average being (at a rough guess) about 12%.

Does anybody have any idea why this may be? It previously used only 3-5% in a normal state.

The latest version is 5.5 Build 2525. If you're still using 5.5.216, it should have told you about the update. Maybe that will fix it, I don't know. I've never had that happen. What anti-virus program are you using? Are you using another firewall? Sounds like sofware conflicts. You could also try uninstalling/reinstalling as well, there could be a corrupt file or two.

It worked

For some days after having installed XP", my cpu was always showing 100 percent usage and it had slowed down.

I did update to sygate 5.6 and it seems to have done the trick


Thank you