The case of the missing CPU cycles

S

Scott

This has happened about 4 times now since setting up this brand new
quad-core Vista Ultimate PC. There will be nothing running on the
system, yet the CPU utilization shows 30-40%. However, the task
manager (even with "show all processes from all users") shows nothing
using the cpu, other than maybe dwm at 1%. The resource monitor shows
the same. However, all four CPU cores are doing something.

Visually inspecting the disk shows little or no activity, so it's not
vm thrashing.

The dwm is slow and lagging -- if I try to open up a command window
and drag it, it is slow to redraw. If I type characters into a command
window, the keystrokes lag.

My suspicion is that it is one of the drivers (probably the graphics
driver) that is consuming these cpu cycles, yet Vista is failing to
account for it in the process table. I'm using an nvidia 8800GTS video
card.

Anyone else experience this problem? Does anyone know a way to
"reboot" just the graphics subsystem (i.e. restart the video drivers
while Vista is running)?

Scott
 
S

Scott

Gotta love cross posters!  JLC

so? it's an issue with Vista, probably due to either a hardware
incompatibility with the nvidia graphics card, or the nvidia drivers.
 

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