Hi there, I have a problem with a new pc that a friend built for me. The PC has an Athlon XP2000 processor in a ASRock K7S8X motherboard. I am running win2k (sp4), the memory in the machine is 512mb ddr.

The processor utilisation is frequently at 90-100% when the pc is idle for long periods of time. I checked the taskman for programs that may be consuming a lot of cpu time or power and there is nothing. System Idle is taking most of it, nothing else seems to be tying it up.

I stripped out the soundcard and wi-fi card and did a fresh install of windows. All that is installed now is the gfx card drivers (matrox g400) and a usb adsl alcatel modem.

The pc will be ok for a while and runs normally. After an hour or two it starts slowing down dramatically with cpu utilisation at 100%. Sometimes windows takes 3 minutes to boot. If I switch it off for a while it is ok again.

I wonder whether anyone has come across this. I wonder whether the bus speed is too high for the processor or even the fan is not making contact correctly meaning the processor might be getting too hot.

If anyone could give me some advice I would be most grateful.

Regards


Marc Dauncey