PC is going to 100% CPU usage and becomes almost unusable

[LPS-AU]

I have noticed that my FireFox 1.5 was becoming unreliable. So I did a
uninstall and reinstall and still no joy. So I turned on Windows Task
Manager and found that the CPU was 1-4% even with FF started but when it
stoped responding I went to shut it down and CPU jumped to 100% , a second
Dumprep.exe started and the system was almost stopped waited for several
minutes with no change and was only just able to get it to reboot. All
commands were very slow to start.
PC is P4 3.2 with 1Gb Ram and 250Gb HD.
Any suggestions on what may be the cause and what to do about it?

TIA Peter S.

 

[Malke]

I have noticed that my FireFox 1.5 was becoming unreliable. So I did a
uninstall and reinstall and still no joy. So I turned on Windows Task
Manager and found that the CPU was 1-4% even with FF started but when it
stoped responding I went to shut it down and CPU jumped to 100% , a second
Dumprep.exe started and the system was almost stopped waited for several
minutes with no change and was only just able to get it to reboot. All
commands were very slow to start.
PC is P4 3.2 with 1Gb Ram and 250Gb HD.
Any suggestions on what may be the cause and what to do about it?

You did an uninstall/reinstall of what? Firefox or the operating system?
What is the virus/malware status of the computer? If you think it is clean,
what programs (names and versions) did you use to determine this? What
version of XP are you using and what is the Service Pack level?

Malke

 

[ducky]

I have noticed that my FireFox 1.5 was becoming unreliable. So I did a
uninstall and reinstall and still no joy. So I turned on Windows Task
Manager and found that the CPU was 1-4% even with FF started but when it
stoped responding I went to shut it down and CPU jumped to 100% , a second
Dumprep.exe started and the system was almost stopped waited for several
minutes with no change and was only just able to get it to reboot. All
commands were very slow to start.
PC is P4 3.2 with 1Gb Ram and 250Gb HD.
Any suggestions on what may be the cause and what to do about it?

TIA Peter S.

Have you done a virus scan? Have you eneabled 'conservative swap file
usage'? it sounds like maybe you are using virtual memory instead of
ram? what does your page file usage (in task manager) look like when
the problem occurs? have you rebooted your computer lately? have you
done a chkdsk and defrag? how much free space is left on your hard
drive? Are you using a ram defragger that is set to execute a a
certaing threshold? Please advise so we can help further. Thanks!

ducky

 

[LPS-AU]

Ducky & Malke
Yes I have done a virus scan using AVG and updated each day. Re installed
FF. Have scanned PC using Ad-Aware and Spybot with current updates. Using XP
Home S2.
Page File is running at about 300 to 945Mb (currently [without FF] Commit
Charge PF 426/2461Mb) but did not grow with attempted FFox shut down. I
start PC each day and during the lockup have rebooted to clear the cpu
workload.
C: has been defragged since problem started C: is about 30Gb and only appx
45% full. No RAM defragged. Will do chkdsk next reboot.
Thanks for your assistance.
******************************

 

[Malke]

Ducky & Malke
Yes I have done a virus scan using AVG and updated each day. Re installed
FF. Have scanned PC using Ad-Aware and Spybot with current updates. Using
XP Home S2.
Page File is running at about 300 to 945Mb (currently [without FF] Commit
Charge PF 426/2461Mb) but did not grow with attempted FFox shut down. I
start PC each day and during the lockup have rebooted to clear the cpu
workload.
C: has been defragged since problem started C: is about 30Gb and only appx
45% full. No RAM defragged. Will do chkdsk next reboot.

If you are quite sure your computer is malware-free (and I would not rely
only on AVG and Ad-aware to determine this - I gave you the procedures in
my first post), then:

1. If you can clearly point to only Firefox as being the problem (i.e., the
computer behaves normally when another browser is running), then uninstall
FF and reinstall. Do not install any extensions yet. See what happens and
then follow up in a FF user forum.

2. If you can't clearly point to FF as being the culprit (i.e., the computer
does *not* behave normally using another browser or not when online, etc.)
then do clean-boot troubleshooting to determine what is running away with
the cpu cycles.

Clean boot in Windows XP - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353
Clean-boot advanced troubleshooting in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316434
and How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

Again, depending on AVG and Ad-aware alone to determine the virus/malware
status is not enough. Also, it is most unlikely that running Chkdsk will do
anything to help, although it shouldn't hurt.

Make