CPU Usage in taskmanager

[monton]

Greetings, been away awhile but have a busy CPU question. At idle, one of my CPUs (dual core AMD 3800) oscillates. It continues to do this even when I shut down all user processes. Performance seems ok. I don't understand why it is doing this. I will attach a .gif screen capture. Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions on diagnosing.
Monton

 

[Nodsu]

Did you try sorting the process list by CPU usage and seeing which ones figure at the top?

Use an advanced process monitor like Process Explorer from Sysinternals. It will show you system processes too.

Most likely it is your firewall or antivirus hogging the machine. Are you a Norton or Zonealarm user?

 

[monton]

ZoneAlarm security suite

I have this issue on a bunch of computers using ZoneAlarm Security Suite. The graphic I attached in my earlier post is from a computer using Avast antivirus/firewall etc.
In processes there doesn't appear to be anything using much in the way of cpu cycles. At least there is nothing that matches the pattern in the graphic.

 

[CCT]

I heard about something similar with another type of A/V that would do that because its' update facility ran and ran and ran when offline or online - just a very busy module.

Info anyway