100% CPU Utilization

[keesue]

Hi,

I have Vista Premium running on a Dell PC with 4 gig Ram. I have spyware,
antivirus (Mcafee) installed with Visa firewall. The system is fairly
generic with Office. The CPU utilization usually sits at less than 5%, with
only Outlook running as an active application. I have experienced a random
100% CPU utilization for no apparent reason. I am able to get task manager
to load and the CPU utilization adds up to less than 50% (on average during
this event).

I have checked all start up programs, all running services and everything
appears to be normal. My question is not necessarily what could cause this,
although I welcome any suggestions; but where else to look to investigate to
further diagnose the problem?

I have all updates applied. I suspected the video driver because this is so
fundamental but it passes diganostics; whether that is conclusive or not is
another issue. I feel my suspicion is supported by the fact that the
difference between the resource utilization statistics in TaskMgr and 100%
are so stark.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Can someone steer me to

 

[keesue]

Belay my last. I found the thread on 100% CPU Utilization...duh. I also
found the reference to Process Explorer. I will use this and report back.