Cursor with hourglass every 5-6 seconds

[drugstorecowboy]

Hell everyone,

I just purchased a Dell Diminsion B110 w/ Windows XP. Every 5 seconds or so regardless of what programs I have running, if I'm online or not, if I'm idle or not, the hourglass comes up. It doesn't seem to be slowing me down or negatively affecting the performance, but it is extremely annoying and I want to get rid of it. I was thinking maybe some program is running in the background that I don't know about.

Any ideas on what it is or how to get rid of it?

Thanx for any help

 

[kirock]

Have you opened Task Manager and taken a look a what processes are runnning when this happens. Sort by CPU usage.
Have you done a defrag lately? Do have you have spyware/trojan/virus protection and have you scanned for these? How much RAM do you have?

 

[drugstorecowboy]

When I opened Task Manager there were no programs running that I do not have open. I have spyware/virus protection and I have 1gb of ram. The hourglass pops up all the time, every 5 seconds, regardless of what programs I have open.

 

[kirock]

Look at the processess tab, not the default first tab of programs. I'm wondering if it's Help.exe running amuck. Write down what process is using the most CPU usage and post the names back here.

 

[drugstorecowboy]

Thanx for your time and help. After talking with you, I began to mess around and one thing I disabled might have gotten rid of the hourglass. Those ads that are underlined text in forums etc. I disabled that, and the hourglass is gone. I don't know if it will remain gone or if disabling that ad program is what did it, but it might have.

Thanx again,
michael