100% CPU Usage on Windows XP

[ironside]

Hi,

I have a problem that has been driving me mad for weeks. My CPU usage
regularly shoots up to 100%, making my computer unusable. I've been
told to do a complete Reinstall, which I did - no improvement. I have
had a million and one Spyware things running and a regularly updated
Norton Antivirus. So I am positive it is not a virus or spyware.

When I check my taskmanager, the 100% is being divided up in various
sizes and keeps jumping from one process to another. One second I have
99% on Taskmgr.exe, the next I have 33% on taskmgr, lsass and other
random processes. While this is going on, my computer will effectively
hang for a good while, and if I'm on the Internet (it's AOL), the
connection will terminate.

After a while, however, the computer will start working again as if
nothing happened.

Does anyone have ANY idea what it could be? I'd be eternally grateful,
and it would mean my computer would not have to go through the window.

Any help would be BRILLIANT!

Thanks!

 

[R. McCarty]

It would help to know certain specifics about your PC. Most
importantly, how much physical memory is installed. Also, the
vendor and speed rating on your CPU. Other useful info would
be the PF meter rating from TaskMgr how many processes are
running (with no Applications started). Finally, the size of your
Pagefile.Sys.

While using TaskMgr Performance be sure to enable "Show
Kernel Times", and on Processes, add columns for..
-Peak Memory Use
-Page Faults
-VM Size

If you've run AdAware,Spybot, HiJackThis & CWShredder
then all the normal advice applies. Windows Critical Updates,
latest drivers, trim back Startups & Watchdogs.

With the additional information, it will be easier to isolate what
is causing the CPU spike.

 

[Guest]

Try to set the priority level to low. I think it defaults to high.
To do this..press alt ctl dlt to bring up task manager.
Right click on Taskmgr.exe
Go to set priority
Left click on Low

Glenn

 

[Guest]

Try setting the priority to low.
To do this
alt ctl dlt to bring up taskmgr
right click on tskmgr.exe
go to set priority
left click on low

Glenn

 

[Mark]

If anyone figures this out, I'd love to hear -- my
computer (Dell P-4, 384 meg RAM, Win XP Pro) does the
same thing. Like Ironside, virus, hijacker, adware, etc.
scans are OK.

Glenn advised setting the priority to low: the priority
of WHAT?

Thanks!

 

[Unknown]

Whay process is using all the time? What application is loaded? Sounds like
you have a virus.

 

[Guest]

I've had this problem with certain applications using csrss.exe 100% and I nailed it down to a corrupt font That took forever to figure out, but after uninstalling Adobe Type Manager, and reinstalling with minimal fonts the problem went away. Added all the fonts back in, voila back again. So I narrowed it down to a range of fonts between L and P... One of those buggers was the bad one.