Abnormally high CPU Usage

[Opala]

Hello,

Recently (about 4 days ago), I reformatted my hard drive and installed Windows XP, but ever since the CPU usage has been acting up, and whenever it goes over 50 percent the mouse starts to lag every 2 seconds (exactly 2 seconds between each lag spike), and its not one program - its all of them, for example, I launch Firefox, it can take like 50-65 cpu, and Kaspersky and spyware doctor (these are just examples).

So whenever a handful of software is running the cpu is always 100 and the computer is really slow, I mean you have to wait minutes, because it won't go off the 100 percent.

This never happened before until recently like 2 days after I reformatted, I searched for answers on this on the net but to no avail.

So I started tinkering, at first I only thought it was my mouse that had the problem but I discovered that it was the whole system, every 2 seconds it freezes (for like 1/4 of a second), for example in games, and in movies.

I've read about USB mouses which I have and it occurred to me that maybe it was a problem with the transmit rate with the mouse, so I got the USBtoPS/2 connector out of the drawer and I put it there, and then I changed the transition to the highest one (i think it was like 200), but still the same problem.

This is my system:
Intel Pentium 4 x86 - 3.00GHZ
Via motherboard model P4M800
ATI Radeon 9250 256mb
AC'97 Audio
512MB of ram

And on another subject - I've read about Hyper Threading technology and I can enable it in my BIOS, but some say it slowed down their software even more, is it worth it?

Thanks in advance for the help
Op.

 

[chamillitarysk8]

try the hyper threading also if you have auto update enabled disable it it use lots of cpu power and 50 mb of ram or so

 

[Opala]

did that, now its fixed, but computer is still REALLY slow because of the HIGH CPU usage, something's screwed up, in the task manager the processes are not using much cpu (system idle is like almost 90% up which is good),
but when I go to the performance tab, it jumps from 60 to 90 cpu usage, even though NOTHING is using that much CPU power.
Any ideas?

 

[chamillitarysk8]

what programs are you running

 

[madbuzrd]

try re-installing motherboard drivers..

 

[LinkedKube]

that's a p4 for you

 

[Oldanalyst]

I had recently started to have trouble with svchost.exe taking up CPU time and using up progressively more memory as it ran on both of my computers. I understand the use of svchost.exe and found that Microsoft admits problems and that 100% CPU use and memory leakage are two of them. I also found that turning off automatic updates was supposed to clear the problem but I could not turn off updates since the choice was greyed out. While you can go into the registry and turn updates off, I found that freeware from www.theorica.net does it for you.