Driver issues and constantly high CPU load

[Guest]

Vista was working mediocre for a couple weeks after I installed it, then it
made my PC go into fits of crashing where it would crash in the middle of
loading a program, and would give me the blue screen of death right before
shutting down. My PC would then frequently fail booting up at least ten times
before Vista would finally load correctly. So, i went to HP.com and made sure
all my drivers were up to date and that windows was up to date as well.
I managed to solve my crashing issue (for the most part) but now my dual
core AMD turion processor NEVER goes below 50% usage. before updating my
drivers my CPU would idle at like 2%. Should I just wait for new drivers or
what? I'd rather not have my CPU fried prematurely just because of my OS...

 

[Dana Cline - MVP]

Laptop or desktop? Is the Sidebar running? Windows Search indexing?

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

 

[Guest]

Compaq Presario V6000 laptop. Sidebar is on and Vista is set to index, so I'm
sure they tax the processor to a small extent. However, previously I was able
to run all the programs I am now, including the index and sidebar, with no
trouble at all- Idle CPU use was 1-7%.

 

[Guest]

I had this same problem. I kind of fixed it by putting all old drivers on.
With my computer only the realtek software sound driver works and improved
with the new driver, the one piece of equipment I don't want to work(horrible
sound). The drivers for all my other hardware get worse performance and are
less stable with every new driver. the newer the driver the more CPU used
idle, the more system unresponsiveness and dropping of input(mouse, keyboard,
copy paste....) and the more lockups, as in the computer freezes without a
bsod. the latest creative drivers prevent windows from even loading for
me(card is out of my computer again). I think the crashes may have damaged
files or hardware. I can't even get media center to work.

Option I see without good advice are a full reinstall and turning off auto
update or some how getting a copy of XP. Any other ideas, as Vista is
getting worse, not better? I can't use any Nvidea driver after 97.46, but
the original driver with vista works better.

Tested memory, cpu, PSU. All my other parts work in XP.
Any way to test mobo power stability(possible cheap caps?)? This is the
only hardware thing I can think of.
a buggy OS and buggy drivers can bring out power problems. I know of this
being an issue before with mobo's and I know of an X-FI with the snap crackle
pop that was fixed with quality capacitors. Again I am saying maybe bad
brand not saying bad caps. Xp would work better with a bad brand so you get
"but my computer works fine in XP" Is there a difference in caps or power
demand(total or stable power draw) from the mobo on Nvidia vs. ATI?

Power in and out of PSU is good.
Any program to test for mobo power stability in Vista? Also what is stable?
Perhaps your techs can do some tests to recreate different bad power
environments on board.
Or take a computer that can't run Vista and is totaly unstable and replace
the caps with high quality ones. At least it's testable and could help
people.

Or there are big problems in the core of the OS, as drivers get better over
time not worse over time.

What options?
getting a new bord is not an option as a bad brand of cap would be on the
replacement too. Getting a differend brand is not an option as there is only
two AGP core 2 duo board and the other has the same issues.

As for drivers. Is DRM going into drivers in steps? This could explain
some things.

 

[Dana Cline - MVP]

I have done the following to speed up my laptop:

Install Vista from scratch (too much junkware to suit me).

Turned off the Sidebar. Particularly the slideshow one...

Turned off the Windows Search service.

Used Microsoft's "autoruns" program to turn other stuff off at startup.

Tweaked with TweakVI.

So far it's much faster (and more stable) than it's as-shipped
configuration.

Dana Cline - MCE MVP