CPU usage at 100%??? System is extremely slow all of a sudden

[Barbara]

My friend was trying to connect my IBM Thinkpad laptop to
his LAN through my GIGAFAST wireless PCMCIA adapter. He
was not successful with the wireless - so finally
connected through an Ethernet card. It worked fine when it
was connected that way.

Since then, however, now that I am running with no
internet connection (just trying to use local
applications) the system has become incredibly slow - even
after re-booting. Task manager shows zero tasks, while
running at 100 CPU usage and about 24 processes open. We
tried running in safe mode and system runs faster. There
must be something running and we don't know what. When
trying to run error checking on the c drive - in safe
mode - we get this message " the disk check could not be
performed because exclusive access to the drive could not
be obtained"

This may sound like a virus, but it was working fine
before and the only connection that occurred was through a
relatively secure network.

Thanks very much in advance.

 

[Josef Stalin]

My friend was trying to connect my IBM Thinkpad laptop to
his LAN through my GIGAFAST wireless PCMCIA adapter. He
was not successful with the wireless - so finally
connected through an Ethernet card. It worked fine when it
was connected that way.

Since then, however, now that I am running with no
internet connection (just trying to use local
applications) the system has become incredibly slow - even
after re-booting. Task manager shows zero tasks, while
running at 100 CPU usage and about 24 processes open. We
tried running in safe mode and system runs faster. There
must be something running and we don't know what. When
trying to run error checking on the c drive - in safe
mode - we get this message " the disk check could not be
performed because exclusive access to the drive could not
be obtained"

This may sound like a virus, but it was working fine
before and the only connection that occurred was through a
relatively secure network.

Thanks very much in advance.

Putting the phrase "the disk check could not be performed because exclusive
access" (google only allows 10 words max) into the exact phrase field of
google returned quite a few hits. I listed a few of them. Your problem
certainly doesn't sound too unusual or like a virus.

http://pub6.ezboard.com/facousticafrm1.showMessage?topicID=487.topic

http://www.tpasoft.com/support/scandisk.html

http://computerservices.olivet.edu/PCSupport/comengo.htm

Uncle Josef