Huge CPU usage...help

[Ar1Pe]

Last night my 1/2 year old AMD Duron 2600+ computer (512 RAM) turned extremely slow.

Task Manager tells that the CPU usage was jumping between 20-95, sometimes even 100 % though I don't have any applications open. I did not find any solution for this.

Tried to restore, but naturally(?) it didn't change anything. Tried Norton GoBack, didn't help. Then it lost my D-drive ( two partitions C: and D:), or says that it has not been formatted.

Shut down and restarted several times trying different things. Found D-drive again and right now everything works again, CPU about 2 % when idle etc.

But the startup time is now really long, about 2-3 minutes. I have Win XP Pro, the latest Norton Internet Security with all the updates, Norton System Works Pro 2004 etc.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[MCT]

#1 idea.... spyware.... u are probly infested download adaware & spybot , then once your clean download spyware blaster .. they can all be found here: http://google.com

best regards

[Ar1Pe]

I have Spybot and allready used it. Nothing found.

I just tried to use defragment; all went well with C-drive (were the OS is), but unable to use defragment in drive D.

Any further ideas?

[Doggie]

i had a similar problem myself.. i had a trojan.. so make sure u have an antivirus program with updated virus definitions, spybot S+D, Hijackthis, Adaware etc..

[Marsden]

What was the Process and what was the process PID?

[XtremeMaC]

1 did u update the spybot?

2 for spyware and stuff like that I use at least 2 programs together, one finds but cannot remove, 1 even cannot find it, etc.

3 try boot time defrag

both oo defrag and diskeeper have this function.

close the running processes and services to run the defrag better...

4 get a virus scanner and update it ..

[Ar1Pe]

Sorry, have been away for a while (I think you quess)

OK. Here comes rest of the story.

Finally it went into a situation where I coudn´t restart; XP went to a point where the XP logo comes and then it jumped back in the beginning. Starting didn´t succeed in any mode; safe mode, last good known.....etc. Nothing helped.

I made the repair install for XP and nothing changed. I emptied the CMOS, didn´t help.

Finally I formatted my C-drive and made a new install. Everything seemed to be ok but after awhile the startup problem renewed. But got this up after several retries when I finally left it here without trying, the computer cooled down ( yes, fans work fine), and started normally.

So I was thinking this might be a hardware problem after all.

Now do you have any further ideas where the problem is? Memory?

TIA

[DarkPhoenix]

AMDs have a tendency to do that if the CPU temp go very high. My father's computer's CPU fan slowed down seriously a few weeks ago.. the PC would start all fine, then work for a few minutes, then it'd show a BSOD. When we then restarted it, it would start half of windows and then just malfunction, and eventually, not even the BIOS text in the very beginning of startup would show up. I am aware that you said your fans(s) work fine, but his appeared to work fine too, it's just that it "worked fine" at about 2000 RPMs less than what it should've. Replacing the fan solved the entire issue.

[Ar1Pe]

OK. Thank you all for your help. I'm on again.

It was a hardware problem, ie. both my HD and motherboard were broken and now have been changed.