kes

I received my Acer pre-installed with Vista Business without a CD or DVD however. (According to Acer, there is a 'hidden partition' with the factory image of the Vista installation files somewhere on my portable). QUESTION - Can i use vLite without a Vista installation CD i.e. using the 'image' in the hidden partition of my portable? Thanks for any pointers kes

OK. Put this down to 'discovering-something-while-looking-for-something else'. Using Process Explorer, I'm quite sure my processor is mostly 'idle' (c 90%), despite what the MS's own System Monitor says ('100% busy'). My main headache still remains - the infernal fan is on too much of the time. It makes more noise than my main desktop! (I realise the original title of this post is no longer the issue.)

Some information on CPU cooling: here and hereA similar thread in another forum: http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=10954 Thanks for that. I've now installed something called CPUIdle, but can't say I've noticed any difference. I'm beginning to suspect a faulty temperature sensor, which is making the fan trigger happy.

Thanks Countach69 - for all of your pointers. (It will take me a short Sabbatical year to follow them all through :-) >-Any specific BIOS settings related to fan speed; Always on, Only ON when reaching X degrees Celcius etc. These are preset, and beyond my reach. (fan turns on above 70 C when AC power is ON, 80 C when on batteries. So no surprises, withouth AC, the fan is on a little less.). >-Since your laptop is probably 5 years old there could be some "dust bunnies" clogging airflow Yep. Hoovered both inlet an outlets. >-Unhook any unnecessary peripherals (joystick, wireless device, ADSL modem etc.) and reboot. I have none, except 'wireless device' with is very necessary for me. It makes no difference with or/ without. (In any case Process Explorer tells me this is not taking up more than a few percent (<3%) of processor cycles.) > -Can you associate an event when this problem started occuring? This is a tough one. As you say, the laptop is >5yrs old, and a lot of s/w has come (and gone) in the meantime. I've cleaned up (registry, cache, temp files, etc) as far as possible. Defragged too. Still to try: >-Does you computer behave the same when you boot in Safe Mode? (intersting...) >-Have you tried using the Microsoft Configuration Utility (msconfig.exe) to disable programs from loading at startup? will try disabling things off one at a time... this way I know what I need, if something stops working thanks again

Thanks - looks like a very useful tool. But here is the puzzle... Process Explorer tells me that Idle is ~90%, whereas... Win98 resident System Tool > System Monitor tells me the processor is running 100% (the PC's cooler fan supports the latter figure, as it is always on, after a few minutes of switching the PC on.) :-(

Hi I have a portable running Win98SE. (600Mhz, 192 MB RAM) The processor utilisation is constantly 100%. I have tried everything, to try and find out what is the cause of it. (Including disabling Kaspersky, my AV (prime suspect)). No avail. My System Resources are showing as 59% free. My User resources are showing as 60% free GDI resources showing 59% free. Is there a tool that I can use to tell me which process is hogging what resources? Thanks for any pointers.